8 Once he’d assembled his team, Jobs gave them thefreedom to be creative and shielded them from the growingbureaucracy at Apple, which tried several times to shutdown the Mac project bec
Trang 1engineers, and back to Steve Two full days of demos, drawings of the various designs, marketing presentations
—I was overwhelmed.
On Monday I called Doug Fairbairn at VTI and told him
I had changed my mind 8
Once he’d assembled his team, Jobs gave them thefreedom to be creative and shielded them from the growingbureaucracy at Apple, which tried several times to shutdown the Mac project because they viewed it as anunimportant distraction “The people who are doing thework are the moving force behind the Macintosh My job is
to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of theorganization and keep it at bay,”9 Jobs wrote in a 1984essay that was printed in the inaugural issue of Macworld
magazine Hertzfeld put it more bluntly: “The most importantthing Steve did was erect a giant shit-deflecting umbrellathat protected the project from the evil suits across thestreet.”10
As well as recruiting the best talent, Jobs is quick to getrid of those who don’t measure up Hiring only insanelygreat employees and firing the bozos has been one ofJobs’s longest held managerial principles “It’s painful whenyou have some people who are not the best people in theworld and you have to get rid of them; but I found that my jobhas sometimes exactly been that—to get rid of somepeople who didn’t measure up and I’ve always tried to do it
in a humane way But nonetheless it has to be done and it
Trang 2is never fun,” Jobs said in a 1995 interview.11
Small Is Beautiful
Jobs likes to work in small teams He didn’t want theoriginal Mac team to exceed one hundred members, lest itbecame unfocused and unmanageable Jobs firmlybelieves that small teams of talented employees run circlesaround larger groups At Pixar, Jobs tried to ensure that thecompany never grew to more than a few hundred people.When asked to compare Apple and Pixar, Jobs attributedmuch of its success to its small size “Apple has somepretty amazing people, but the collection of people at Pixar
is the highest concentration of remarkable people that Ihave ever witnessed,” Jobs told Fortune in 1998 “There’s
a person who’s got a Ph.D in computer-generated plants
—3-D grass and trees and flowers There’s another who isthe best in the world at putting imagery on film Also, Pixar
is more multidisciplinary than Apple ever will be But thekey thing is that it is much smaller Pixar’s got 450 people.You could never have the collection of people that Pixar hasnow if you went to two thousand people.”
Jobs’s philosophy harks back to the old days when he,Wozniak, and a few teenage friends assembled computers
by hand in a garage To some extent, Jobs’s preference forsmall development teams at Apple today is the same thing:
a simulation of a garage startup inside a big company with
Trang 3more than 21,000 employees.
On returning to Apple in 1997, Jobs set aboutassembling an A team to resurrect the company Several ofthe top executives he appointed had worked with himbefore at NeXT, including Jon Rubinstein, who he put incharge of hardware; Avie Tevanian, who headed upsoftware; and David Manovich, who was put in charge ofsales Jobs has a reputation as a micromanager, but atNeXT he had learned to trust these lieutenants He nolonger oversees every decision the way he used to AtPixar, Jobs delegated almost everything to Catmull andLasseter At Apple, Jobs cedes much of the day-to-daymanagement to Tim Cook, the chief operating officer, amaster at operations and logistics who is widelyconsidered the number two at Apple When Jobs took sixweeks’ sick leave in 2005 after his cancer operation, Cooktook over as acting CEO Ron Johnson, head of retail,manages almost everything to do with Apple’s chain ofretail stores; while chief financial officer PeterOppenheimer handles finances and deals with Wall Street.Delegation at Apple frees up Jobs to do what he loves best
—develop new products
Jobs’s Job
Working with partners like Jonathan Ive and Jon Rubinstein,Jobs plays a unique role He doesn’t design circuit boards
Trang 4or write code, but Jobs puts his stamp firmly on his teams’work He’s the leader who provides the vision, guides thedevelopment, and makes many of the key decisions “Hedidn’t create anything really, but he created everything,”wrote former CEO John Sculley on Jobs’s contribution tothe original Mac According to Sculley, Jobs once said tohim: “The Macintosh is inside of me, and I’ve got to get itout and turn it into a product.”12
Jobs acts as the team director, the arbiter who rejects oraccepts the work of his creative partners, guiding them asthey work toward a solution One source told me that Iveonce confided that he wouldn’t be able to do the work hedoes without Jobs’s input Ive may be a creative genius, but
he needs Jobs’s guiding hand
Jobs is the “product picker,” in the parlance of SiliconValley A product picker is a term used by Silicon Valleyventure capitalists to identify the key product person atstartup companies By definition, a startup must succeed
on its first product If it doesn’t, it goes under But not allstartups start with a product Some startups are a group ofengineers who have a lot of talent and ideas, but haven’t yetfigured out what product they want to develop Thishappens all the time in the Valley, but to ensure the success
of a startup like this, there has to be an individual who’s got
a nose for what that product should be It’s not always theCEO or a top executive, and they may not have expertise inmanagement or marketing: their skill is picking out the keyproduct from a torrent of ideas
Trang 5“The products bubble up but there has to be a czar,”explained Geoffrey Moore, a venture capitalist andtechnology consultant Moore is the author of Crossing the Chasm, the best-selling book about bringing high-techproducts to the mainstream that is revered as SiliconValley’s marketing bible “The success or failure of astartup depends on its first product,” continued Moore “It’s
a hits business Startups must have a hit or they’ll fail If youpick 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 whenstartups are looking for venture capital is the fledglingcompany’s product picker Picking products doesn’t work
by committee— there has to be an individual who is able toact as a decision maker
General Motor’s vice chairman Bob Lutz, the legendary
“car czar,” is a good example An ex-Chrysler, Ford, andBMW executive, Lutz is famous for a string of distinctive,design-driven hit cars like the Dodge Viper, PlymouthProwler, and BMW 2002 He’s a quintessential “car guy”who knocks out distinctive vehicles rather than thedesigned-by-committee look-alikes of competitors RonGarriques, a former Motorola executive responsible for thehit Razr mobile phone, is another example In 2007,Garriques was recruited by Michael Dell—newly returned tohis troubled company—to run Dell’s consumer business,and pick hit products, no doubt
Trang 6“It’s a high-wire act,” said Moore “It’s very clear when youfail You have to risk everything every time you do it It’splaying center court at Wimbledon And you have to have alot of power to do it Not many have the power or the will topush it through [the] organization without being edited orcompromised or watered down It doesn’t work if you pick
by committee.”
At Apple, Jobs has successfully picked and guided todevelopment a hit product every two or three years—theiMac, the iPod, the Mac Book, the iPhone “Apple is a hit-driven company,” said Moore “It’s had one hit afteranother.”
For much of the last century, there were myriadcompanies run by similar strong-willed product czars, fromThomas 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 entrepreneursare no longer there,” lamented Dieter Rams, the designgenius who helped propel Braun to prominence for severaldecades “Today there is only Apple and to a lesser extentSony.”14
Trang 7Pugilistic Partners
During product development, Jobs is involved in manymajor decisions, from whether there should be fans forcooling machines to the font used on the box But althoughJobs is king of the mountain, the decision making at Appleisn’t all top down Argument and debate are central toJobs’s creative thinking Jobs wants partners whochallenge his ideas, and whose ideas can be challenged
by him, often forcefully Jobs makes decisions by engaging
in hand-to-hand intellectual combat It’s demanding andpugnacious, but rigorous and creative
Take the pricing of the first Mac in 1984 Jobs wrestledthe pricing of the Mac with Sculley for several weeks Not acouple of meetings They argued about the issues nightand day for weeks. The pricing of the Mac presented a bigproblem Apple’s revenues were on the slide, and the Machad been expensive to develop Sculley wanted to recoupthe R&D investment, and he wanted to raise enough money
to strategically out-advertise the competition But if the Macwas priced too high, it might scare off buyers and wouldn’tsell in volume Both men took turns debating the opposingside of the argument—the thesis and antithesis—playingdevil’s advocate to see where the arguments would lead.Sculley euphemistically called arguing with Jobs “jousting.”
“Steve and I enjoyed taking one position, then turning it
Trang 8around and adopting another argument,” Sculley wrote.
“We would constantly joust over what each of us thoughtabout new ideas, projects and colleagues.”
There was likely similar “jousting” at Apple when theiPhone was launched in the summer of 2007 The iPhoneinitially cost $600, but within two months of its release, Jobshad dropped the price to $400 There were howls ofprotests from early adopters, who rightly felt ripped off Theoutcry was so vociferous, Jobs issued a rare publicapology and a $100 rebate
Jobs dropped the iPhone’s price because the initialresponse had exceeded Apple’s expectations—it had soldmore than one million units—and Jobs saw an opportunity
to rapidly ramp up sales in the crucial holiday period For alot of consumer electronics, including the iPod, there are asmany sales during the holiday period as there are the rest
of the year "iPhone is a breakthrough product, and wehave the chance to ‘go for it’ this holiday season,” Jobswrote in a note to customers on the Apple website “iPhone
is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will beaffordable by even more customers It benefits both Appleand every iPhone user to get as many new customers aspossible in the iPhone ‘tent.’ ”
Day to day at Apple, meetings with Jobs can often bearguments—long, combative arguments Jobs relishesintellectual combat He wants a high-level discussion—even a fight— because it’s the most effective way to get tothe bottom of a problem And by hiring the best people he
Trang 9can find, he ensures the debate is at the highest possiblelevel.
A meeting with Jobs can be a trial by fire He’ll challengeeverything that is said, sometimes extremely rudely But it’s
a test He is forcing people to stick up for their ideas If theyfeel strongly enough, they’ll defend their position By raisingthe stakes, and people’s blood pressures, he’s testing tosee if they know their facts and have a strong argument.The more firmly they stand, the more likely they’re right “Ifyou’re a yes-man you’re doomed with Steve because he’spretty confident about what he knows, so he needssomeone to challenge him,” ex-Apple programmer PeterHoddie told me “Sometimes he says, ‘I think we need to
do this’—and it’s a test to see if anyone will challenge him.These are the kinds of people he’s looking for.”15
It’s extremely difficult to bullshit Jobs “If you don’t knowwhat you’re talking about, he’s going to find out,” saidHoddie “He’s really bright He’s extremely well informed
He has access to some of the best people on the planet Ifyou don’t know what you’re talking about, he’s gonnaknow.”
Hoddie described one occasion when he was arguingwith Jobs about some new chip technology underdevelopment at Intel, the processor supplier Occasionally,Hoddie would bullshit Jobs just to get him off his back.Later that day, Jobs cornered Hoddie and challenged himabout his earlier statements about Intel Jobs had phoned
up Intel’s chairman, Andy Grove, and asked him about the
Trang 10technology Hoddie had been talking about Luckily, Hoddiehadn’t been bullshitting “You can’t bluff someone who canpick up the phone and talk to Andy,” Hoddie said, laughing.During his thirty-year career, Jobs has maintained astring of creative partnerships, beginning with his highschool buddy Steve Wozniak The list includes the originalMac design team, from the hardware genius Burrell Smith
to programming luminaries such as Alan Kay, Bill Atkinson,and Andy Hertzfeld In the decade Jobs has been workingwith design genius Jonathan Ive, Apple has led the world inindustrial design His partners at Apple include JonRubinstein, who oversaw a string of hit hardware, from theiMac to the iPod; and Ron Johnson, who mastermindedApple’s retail stores, one of the most successfulmoneymaking chains ever (more on the stores later) And
at Pixar, his teaming with Ed Catmull and John Lassetercreated a moviemaking powerhouse
“Think Different”
One of Jobs’s most productive working partnerships hasbeen with Lee Clow, a tall, bearded hippie adman and hisagency, TBWA /Chiat/Day Jobs’s partnership with Clowand his agency has spanned several decades andproduced some of advertising’s most memorable andinfluential campaigns, from the 1984 TV spot thatintroduced the Macintosh, to the iPod silhouette ads
Trang 11plastered across billboards worldwide.
Headquartered in Los Angeles, TBWA/Chiat/Day isconsidered one of the most creative advertising companies
in the world Cofounded in 1968 by Guy Day, an L.A adveteran, and Jay Chiat, a hard-driving New Yorker whorelocated to sunny Southern California in the mid-1960s,the company is now run by its longtime creative directorLee Clow The company was once considered “gonzo” forits controversial, sometimes reckless, approach toadvertising, but has matured and now boasts sober, blue-chip clients such as Nissan, Shell, and Visa
For Apple the company has produced widely acclaimed,award-winning campaigns that are often regarded more ascultural events than mere advertising blitzes Ads like “ThinkDifferent,” “Switchers,” and “I’m a Mac” have been widelydiscussed, critiqued, parodied, and copied When acampaign spawns hundreds of parodies on YouTube and
is turned into a sketch on late-night comedy shows, then theads have graduated from the commercial to the culturalrealm
Jobs’s association with the ad company began in theearly 1980s, when the agency—then known as Chiat/Day—was producing a series of popular ads for Apple’scomputers In 1983, the agency began work on what wouldbecome one of the most celebrated ads in advertisinghistory: the TV commercial that introduced the Macintoshduring the third quarter of the Super Bowl in January 1984
Trang 12The spot began with a tag line taken from another,discarded ad: “Why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984’ ”—areference to George Orwell’s dystopian novel It was toogood a line to just throw away, so the agency pitched it toApple And, of course, it was perfectly suited for the launch
of the Mac The agency hired British director Ridley Scott,who’d just finished filming Blade Runner, to film the ad on aLondon soundstage Using a cast of British skinheads,Scott portrayed a bleak Orwellian future, where a BigBrother squawking propaganda from a giant TV cows themasses into submission Suddenly, in rushes an athleticwoman in a Macintosh T-shirt, who smashes the screenwith the toss of a sledgehammer The sixty-second spotnever showed the Mac, nor any computer, but the messagewas clear: the Mac would free downtrodden computerusers from the hegemony of IBM
Apple’s board of directors was shown the spot just aweek before it was due to air and freaked out Theyordered the ad pulled from the Super Bowl, but Chiat/Daywas unable to sell the slot in time and the ad ran
It turned out to be fortuitous: the ad garnered moreattention and more press than the game itself Although itwas shown only twice (during the Super Bowl and earlier,
on an obscure TV station in the middle of the night to make
it eligible for advertising awards), the ad was rebroadcast
in countless news reports and on Entertainment Tonight.Apple estimated that more than 43 million people saw the
ad, which was worth millions of dollars in free advertising,