The wisdom of Steve Jobs is timeless. He really understood what it takes to create great products and how to make it happen organizationally. As someone who was ejected from the company he created by a business professional who then wrecked the company, he was also well aquatinted with professionals who know nothing about creating great products…aka the MBA CEO.
I ran across an interesting thread examining the decline of some great companies: Intel, Boeing, Sony. All destroyed by MBA CEOs who created ‘shareholder value’, business porn for pleasuring the hedge fund holding company crowd, while destroying the company’s long term ability to create great products. Or in the case of Boeing, create products that fall out of the sky. Just think how different Intel would be today if Paul Otellini have never been CEO and they had manufactured iPhone CPUs.
Steve Jobs definitively explained how sales and marketing types, MBA CEOs, destroy the company spirit of innovation in his lost interview:
Sales and marketing people end up running the companies and the product people get driven out of decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers.
Craftsmanship, nobody said it better but very few follow the advice. The fools gold glitter of MBA CEOs still holds a deadly allure.
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