Like many others this week, I was sadden to hear the news of Steve Jobs passing. Along with Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs has had a tremendous effect on my career. I will definitely miss his influence on many things. Like many things, my interaction with his products has been positive and negative. First, let's remember what Steve Jobs has done.
There are four parts to his career as I see them:
- Apple part 1. Lets be honest, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created Apple. Jobs created a successful company that had some good products, including the Apple II and the original Mac. Unfortunately, during his first run at Apple, things didn't quite work out and Jobs was forced out in a board room coup. You have to view this as a success when he left.
- NeXT Computer. In this world, Jobs created packaged hardware software combination. I wasn't a fan of the hardware, but I found the software OS to be a great user interface. Eventually, the software was freed from the constraints of the hardware.
- Pixar.I don't know a lot about Pixar beyond the cool movies, so I can't speak much there.
- Apple part 2. When Apple purchased NeXT Computer, it brought Jobs back into the fold there. From there, Apple quit the software licensing business, brought out some good hardware, integrated the Next OS and the Mac OS into Mac OSX, brought us the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and other cool products.
I was recently reading the article by Guy Kawasaki about what he learned from Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, there are some things within it that should be tempered with the situation.
I hear a lot of situations where people say that you shouldn't listen to customers because they don't know what they want. I've found that customers are sometimes confused, but they do understand the problems that they are trying to solved and that you can learn a lot by listening to them.
When I worked at The Coca-Cola Company many hears ago, we went to a meeting at Apple's offices in Atlanta. We explained the problems that we had with the Macintosh within the computing infrastructure. We had a number of pain points and we asked them to put some resources into resolving these issues. The response from the Apple reps was to seriously state that we should replace many of the basic elements of the Coca-Cola computing infrastructure (AS/400s, Oracle databases, Novell Netware, Token Ring (yeah, it stunk)). The serious response was that we started the Apple Cider project to limit the ability of users to purchase Macs because "they wanted them." The cost to support the Mac was just too high within Coca-Cola. It definitely limited the sales of the Macs back in the mid 90s when Apple could have used sales. Maybe they should have listened.
Years later, we were doing some work for a company that was having issues getting their products accepted by the marketplace. I was tasked with trying to understand what the customers wanted. I went and did this. I had a bunch of great conversations. I found what these users wanted, documented it, and was rebuffed when I stated my results. About 18 months later, a different company started after this was offered $125 million buyout. Talking and listening to customers might have brought someone millions of dollars. But what do those crazy customers know, they just pay the bills.
I remember working with someone trying to sell me on joining them. I heard the line, "I know what the users want just like Steve Jobs." As I said, "why should I believe you? What products have you shipped? When did you present a game changing product? What have you done in the marketplace?"
Never heard from them again.
Now, lets be clear, the Steve Jobs / Guy Kawasaki way works for some. Seriously, it works, or they wouldn't have had significant success, but, unless you have something special about you, this is not a formula for success. Just because this worked for them in their situation doesn't mean it will work for you in your situation. While I agree with many of their points, i don't agree with them all. Blindly copying their views is the surest and quickest way to the poor house.