What Would Steve Jobs Do? How the Steve Jobs Way Can Inspire Anyone to Think Differently and Win Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: Peter Sander
business leader than the creative leader, handling the negotiations and dealings with Disney. He pretty much left the creative people alone to do their thing, something he didn’t normally do when it came to a hardware product. Although many pundits question his trust of his workers, Steve hired good people and put a lot of faith in their talent and decision-making abilities, especially when he was dealing with topics he didn’t know so much about.
B ACK TO THE F UTURE : S TEVE R ETURNS TO A PPLE
Apple went through sort of a “dark ages” period from the time Steve left in 1985 until his return in late 1996. The company tried to leverage the Macintosh platform into several flavors, sizes, and shapes. The only success among these launches was the PowerBook, a powerful but still heavy laptop version of the Mac. The product provided portability, networking capabilities, and colorto the still-being-defined laptop space, and served as a model for others to emulate.
But the Apple standard became increasingly marginalized during this period. It languished as Windows captured all the personal computer growth, especially with the blockbuster Windows 95 release and with much cheaper hardware because of the memory and powerful processors that had become available. Dell and Compaq pretty much owned the space, especially in the business world. Apple’s response was to sue Microsoft for copying Lisa’s graphical interface, but this never went forward. Eventually, after a series of product and marketing failures, Sculley was shown the door (by Markkula, actually).
Things were not improved by the efforts of the next two CEOs: Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio. The company actually lost money for three years, 1996 to 1998. Amelio chose to focus on cutting operating costs, which is rarely an effective strategy, especially at a creative and innovative enterprise. The company struggled to enter other markets, like the PDA market, with Newton, another expensive failure. But he did have the vision to see the NeXT operating system as a good core for the next generation of Macintoshes. Apple also got Steve Jobs back as part of the $429 million deal.
Everyone could see the writing on the wall—except Amelio. Soon he was also ousted by a board that was frustrated by bland business results and a low stock price.Steve Jobs took over as “interim” CEO (“iCEO,” as many pundits, including Steve, referred to it) after being an energetic advisor for a while.
It’s hard to imagine today, but Apple was really on the ropes in 1997. It had too many products, and most of them were just incremental, warmed-over versions of Mac desktops and laptops. It had failed with Newton. Its stock price was languishing. It had a small following, mostly of graphic designers, students, and teachers. There was no killer app. The operating system was aging and not particularly compelling. Software was limited, and many titles that hadn’t been developed on the Mac didn’t run well on it. Its dealer network was fading. And Windows was eating its lunch.
The company was now producing and cataloging 15 product platforms and thousands of variations among those platforms. Steve immediately saw this as a fundamental problem, one of lack of focus and poor strategic direction. It was like throwing a bunch of things at a wall to see what would stick—not a formula for success anywhere in business, and especially not in technology. Steve saw it as an extension of the battle for shelf space—lots of products, but not particularly good products; quantity instead of quality. This was not good for the products themselves, not good for the channel, not good for the brand, and, most of all, not good for the customer. And it was not good for profitability, as it required too many resources, spread too thin.
So Steve slashed and burned. He looked at the market as a very simple four-quadrant grid. One dimension was Customer, divided into Consumer and Professional. The other
B ACK TO THE F UTURE : S TEVE R ETURNS TO A PPLE
Apple went through sort of a “dark ages” period from the time Steve left in 1985 until his return in late 1996. The company tried to leverage the Macintosh platform into several flavors, sizes, and shapes. The only success among these launches was the PowerBook, a powerful but still heavy laptop version of the Mac. The product provided portability, networking capabilities, and colorto the still-being-defined laptop space, and served as a model for others to emulate.
But the Apple standard became increasingly marginalized during this period. It languished as Windows captured all the personal computer growth, especially with the blockbuster Windows 95 release and with much cheaper hardware because of the memory and powerful processors that had become available. Dell and Compaq pretty much owned the space, especially in the business world. Apple’s response was to sue Microsoft for copying Lisa’s graphical interface, but this never went forward. Eventually, after a series of product and marketing failures, Sculley was shown the door (by Markkula, actually).
Things were not improved by the efforts of the next two CEOs: Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio. The company actually lost money for three years, 1996 to 1998. Amelio chose to focus on cutting operating costs, which is rarely an effective strategy, especially at a creative and innovative enterprise. The company struggled to enter other markets, like the PDA market, with Newton, another expensive failure. But he did have the vision to see the NeXT operating system as a good core for the next generation of Macintoshes. Apple also got Steve Jobs back as part of the $429 million deal.
Everyone could see the writing on the wall—except Amelio. Soon he was also ousted by a board that was frustrated by bland business results and a low stock price.Steve Jobs took over as “interim” CEO (“iCEO,” as many pundits, including Steve, referred to it) after being an energetic advisor for a while.
It’s hard to imagine today, but Apple was really on the ropes in 1997. It had too many products, and most of them were just incremental, warmed-over versions of Mac desktops and laptops. It had failed with Newton. Its stock price was languishing. It had a small following, mostly of graphic designers, students, and teachers. There was no killer app. The operating system was aging and not particularly compelling. Software was limited, and many titles that hadn’t been developed on the Mac didn’t run well on it. Its dealer network was fading. And Windows was eating its lunch.
The company was now producing and cataloging 15 product platforms and thousands of variations among those platforms. Steve immediately saw this as a fundamental problem, one of lack of focus and poor strategic direction. It was like throwing a bunch of things at a wall to see what would stick—not a formula for success anywhere in business, and especially not in technology. Steve saw it as an extension of the battle for shelf space—lots of products, but not particularly good products; quantity instead of quality. This was not good for the products themselves, not good for the channel, not good for the brand, and, most of all, not good for the customer. And it was not good for profitability, as it required too many resources, spread too thin.
So Steve slashed and burned. He looked at the market as a very simple four-quadrant grid. One dimension was Customer, divided into Consumer and Professional. The other