Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [42]
“The products bubble up but there has to be a czar,” explained Geoffrey Moore, a venture capitalist and technology consultant. Moore is the author of Crossing the Chasm, the best-selling book about bringing high-tech products to the mainstream that is revered as Silicon Valley’s marketing bible. “The success or failure of a startup depends on its first product,” continued Moore. “It’s a hits business. Startups must have a hit or they’ll fail. If you pick the right product you win big.”13
Moore said Jobs is the consummate product picker. One of the key things Moore looks for in pitch meetings when startups are looking for venture capital is the fledgling company’s product picker. Picking products doesn’t work by committee—there has to be an individual who is able to act as a decision maker.
General Motors’ vice-chairman, Bob Lutz, the legendary “car czar,” is a good example. An ex-Chrysler, Ford, and BMW executive, Lutz is famous for a string of distinctive, design-driven hit cars like the Dodge Viper, Plymouth Prowler, and BMW 2002. He’s a quintessential “car guy” who knocks out distinctive vehicles rather than the designed-by-committee look-alikes of competitors. Ron Garriques, a former Motorola executive responsible for the hit Razr mobile phone, is another example. In 2007, Garriques was recruited by Michael Dell—newly returned to his troubled company—to run Dell’s consumer business, and pick hit products, no doubt.
“It’s a high-wire act,” said Moore. “It’s very clear when you fail. You have to risk everything every time you do it. It’s playing center court at Wimbledon. And you have to have a lot of power to do it. Not many have the power or the will to push it through [the] organization without being edited or compromised or watered down. It doesn’t work if you pick by committee.”
At Apple, Jobs has successfully picked and guided to development a hit product every two or three years—the iMac, the iPod, the MacBook, the iPhone. “Apple is a hit-driven company,” said Moore. “It’s had one hit after another.”
For much of the last century, there were myriad companies run by similar strong-willed product czars, from Thomas Watson Jr. at IBM to Walt Disney. But the number of successful companies with product czars at the helm, like Sony under Akio Morita, has dwindled in recent years. Many contemporary companies are run by committee. “What’s missing today is that these kind of entrepreneurs are no longer there,” lamented Dieter Rams, the design genius who helped propel Braun to prominence for several decades. “Today there is only Apple and to a lesser extent Sony.”14
Pugilistic Partners
During product development, Jobs is involved in many major decisions, from whether there should be fans for cooling machines to the font used on the box. But although Jobs is king of the mountain, the decision making at Apple isn’t all top down. Argument and debate are central to his creative thinking. Jobs wants partners who challenge his ideas, and whose ideas can be challenged by him, often forcefully. He makes decisions by engaging in hand-to-hand intellectual combat. It’s demanding and pugnacious, but rigorous and creative.
Take the pricing of the first Mac in 1984. Jobs wrestled the pricing of the Mac with Sculley for several weeks. Not a couple of meetings. They argued about the issues night and day for weeks. Setting a price for the Mac presented a big problem. Apple’s revenues were on the slide, and the Mac had been expensive to develop. Sculley wanted to recoup the R&D investment, and he wanted to raise enough money to strategically out-advertise the competition. But if the Mac was priced too high, it might scare off buyers and wouldn’t sell in volume. Both men took turns debating the opposing side of the argument—the thesis and antithesis—playing devil’s advocate to see where the arguments would lead.