Steve Jobs is a name synonymous with genius and leadership, and even for some notoriety for his smug and questionable behavior with his employees. Regardless, nobody can deny his contributions to the field of technology and innovation. His products starting from early Apple computers, Apple Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad are the testaments of his intellect and vision.
It is no secret that Steve Jobs had a different perspective and rather unconventional ways of looking at things. He had a different take on things. His one interview for the series “Triumph of Nerd” in 1995 got stuck in many minds.
In this interview, he explained why big corporations fail to produce good products. The interview was misplaced and then later found by the director Paul Sen that went online later for all of us to listen to what this business magnate of the most valued company had to say.
Why Do Big Companies Not Produce Good Products? Steve Jobs Thoughts
In this interview, Jobs discussed why innovation died in big companies. He criticized big companies for creating bad products. According to him, big companies prioritized sales and marketing over innovation or product development. Big companies only tried to replicate what drove them to success and capitalize on initial success only.
Take the example of PepsiCo. According to him, PepsiCo would not introduce any new product for 10 years, and even if they did, it would be just changing the size of the bottle. Nothing breakthrough!
In companies like PepsiCo, sales, and marketing teams drove the company to success. So, in such companies, the marketing and sales team got promoted and given all the credit because they single-handedly carried the company with even a bad product to success. So, product people were driven out of any decision-making process due to their less relevance in big companies, while sales and marketing enjoyed everything.
Then, Jobs further pointed out that this could happen to technology companies as well. As per Jobs, if same thing started happening to the technology companies like IBM and Xerox who already had a monopoly in their markets, it would be a bigger problem. Even if a product person developed something better, it would go unnoticed as it would not make the company more successful.
The only thing that could enable the company to sustain its monopoly would be the marketing and sales teams. This would further discourage product people to work on anything newer.
When this would start happening in technology companies, it would be a bigger problem. There would not be any new innovation or disruptive technologies to change the course of world.
The Takeaway
So, in nutshell, Jobs thought big companies had no people’s interest in their hearts. They just wanted to make their profits and make sales and marketing teams sell their mediocre products to the consumers. They even did not give importance to product development to serve customers with better products to cater to their needs. For them, it was all about profit and maintaining their position in the market.
Jobs thought unimaginative minds with no craftsmanship and passion for helping customers led to uninspiring and mediocre or rather bad products being created in big companies.
What do you think? Do you agree with Steve Jobs, the co-founder of the trillion-dollar company Apple Inc?
