Apple Post-Jobs, Studio Movie or Indie Film?
So far today on CNBC and Twitter I have seen Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Alva Edison and Abraham Lincoln all compared unfavorably to Steve Jobs. And the greater these people claim Jobs is the less impact from his departure they foresee for Apple. A friend compared him to Frank Lloyd Wright, which in the obsession with design and how it interacts with how people lives seems closer to the mark. It seems to me though that Apple with and without Jobs is more like an indie film vs. a big studio movie. I don’t have the intimate familiarity with Apple to really know the role Jobs personally plays in product development or the extent to which whatever contribution he makes personally can be replaced by the other people acting in the corporate culture he has created at Apple. What I do know though is that he can’t be BOTH an irreplaceable transcendent genius, AND just another cog in the Apple machine that will be unaffected by his absence. Jobs is not infallible, over the years he has introduced some real duds. Both his hits and his misses seem to me to come from his belief that focus groups and marketing studies aren’t important because people can tell you what they want if the product doesn’t exist yet. And his confidence in his ability to predict which products that people don’t know exist they will find indispensable. I think in his absence products will start reflecting focus group and design committee input as opposed to Jobs’ singular aesthetic vision. I think their products are going to be more like a Hollywood studio movie, maybe a good studio movie but still a studio movie that has been reworked to be inoffensive and have broad appeal over all market segments, rather than like a independent film created solely to satisfy the creative urge of the director. Some indie films are really great and others are complete misses. I don’t think anyone at Apple has the “arrogance” or the self-confidence to dominant the product development process like Jobs, or have the balls to take full personal responsibility for the success or failure of those products. Over time this can’t help but diminish the products appeal with their traditional and so far very loyal customer base. Apple is going to become more risk averse, more committee decisions, more focus group input, without Jobs. His attitude has been people don’t know what they want until I show them what’s possible. I don’t see any one at Apple taking on that sort of responsibility or having the stature to make it stick if they tried. Revolutionary innovations don’t come out of focus groups. Apple is going to remain a great brand for a while but I think their days of revolutionary innovation are over.
-
jvonneumann posted this
