6. Interview with Jobs.

Hey everyone!

I am back with another Apple story. This time I prepared an article about a interview with Steve Jobs. It's quite a long article so I'll post a link of the site so you can read the whole parts, and I want to show you what I think it's important of it.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041012_4018_db083.htm






Q: What can we learn from Apple's struggle to innovate during the decade before you(Jobs)returned in 1997?

A: You need a very product-oriented culture, even in a technology company. Lots of companies have tons of great engineers and smart people. But ultimately, there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together. Otherwise, you can get great pieces of technology all floating around the universe. But it doesn't add up to much. That's what was missing at Apple for a while. There were bits and pieces of interesting things floating around, but not that gravitational pull.
People always ask me why did Apple really fail for those years, and it's easy to blame it on certain people or personalities. Certainly, there was some of that. But there's a far more insightful way to think about it. Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years. That's a long time. And how are monopolies lost? Think about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly. But after that, the product people aren't the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It's the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever.
Because what's the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself? So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy. John Akers at IBM is the consummate example. Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they're no longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn't.






Q: How did Apple recapture its innovative spark?

A: I used to be the youngest guy in every meeting I was in, and now I'm usually the oldest. And the older I get, the more I'm convinced that motives make so much difference. HP's primary goal was to make great products. And our primary goal here is to make the world's best PCs -- not to be the biggest or the richest. We have a second goal, which is to always make a profit -- both to make some money but also so we can keep making those great products. For a time, those goals got flipped at Apple, and that subtle change made all the difference. When I got back, we had to make it a product company again.



Q: How do you manage for innovation?

A: We hire people who want to make the best things in the world. You'd be surprised how hard people work around here. They work nights and weekends, sometimes not seeing their families for a while. Sometimes people work through Christmas to make sure the tooling is just right at some factory in some corner of the world so our product comes out the best it can be. People care so much, and it shows. I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous.
It's because when you buy our products, and three months later you get stuck on something, you quickly figure out [how to get past it]. And you think, "Wow, someone over there at Apple actually thought of this!" And then three months later you try to do something you hadn't tried before, and it works, and you think "Hey, they thought of that, too." And then six months later it happens again. There's almost no product in the world that you have that experience with, but you have it with a Mac. And you have it with an iPod.


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I think Jobs did a great work by systemizing the company only to focus on the product. Such trials brought Apple's atmosphrere more product-oriented. From this point of view, we can learn that it's also very important to anlayze the internal environment. Apple had made good conditions for the workers and also had a static business mind, which was to make the best product in the world. With the best co-workers and the inoovative mind of the head officers they even have monopolized the GUI market for a while. But as they were neglecting the imortance of the sales department other competitors have stolen away their pie. So here rises, again, how it is important to analyze the external environment. Any time, you can just be beaten out of the game. I think that's what really important in business strategy. Internal / external analyzing, good product, and well-trained sales force with efficient marketing strategy are the first thing you have to be good at to survive in the business jungle.


Posted by Dong-Joon Yoh (20300343)