As Apple’s designers and engineers toiled away at creating an iPod that could play video, Steve Jobs kept telling reporters that a video iPod was a dumb idea. Even in late September, a couple of weeks before the video iPod’s unveiling, he was saying “that the market isn’t yet right for personal video devices.” So is Steve Jobs a big fat liar? No, he’s a smart businessman.
“Transparency” is a big buzzword these days. To succeed in today’s interconnected world, the common wisdom says, you need to let it all hang out – expose your data, expose your processes, expose your plans. One prominent management consultant’s message, according to CIO Insight magazine, boils down to “bare it all and share it all.” Call it the slut strategy.
Now, there’s a lot to be said for transparency, and for modular processes. But it’s easy to go too far – to make your company so transparent, so connectable, that you turn your entire business into an easily copied (and easily discarded) commodity. Even in the Internet Age, a company’s competitive advantage still hinges on what, to outsiders, remains hidden, obscure, and hard to replicate. Google has made a lot of its technology transparent, but the essence of the company, the source of its advantage, remains opaque.
Openness and honesty are good things. But let’s not lose sight of the enduring power of secrets and lies.
Maybe — or maybe if he had admitted the need for video and looked for companies to partner with, the video solution would be better and the market for portal digital videos would be a lot more developed. Steve Jobs and Apple have always taken the uber-secrecy and total control route, and this is a part of their overall strategy of controlling every element of product creation and distribution. And their ongoing failure to allow other firms to innovate on their platform is why they lost the OS market to MSFT, and why they’ll lose the mp3 player market to someone who’s not as secretive and controlling.
Perhaps. On the other hand, the future’s uncertain, and in the meantime they’ve certainly been having a hell of a run. Would that success have been possible without tight control and considerable secrecy? I doubt it.
I think you’re spot on here. The secrets can not only prevent your competitors from beating you to market, they can add to your customer-stickyness tremendously. Look at how people pass around gossip and rumours of what Apple or Google will release next. Customers pleased with one product from a company will often not switch to a competitor’s new release, even if it offers something new, based on hope and rumours of new products from their current vendor of choice. Transparency facilitates fair comparison, while opacity sometimes leads to customers comparing actual offerings from competitors with imagined, hoped-for products from you.
Of course, it can also blow up in your face (like any good idea). :)
There’s a HUGE difference between secrecy and lies. The first is often acceptable, IMHO, the latter rarely defensible.
Personally, at least from how you describe the comments, it seems Mr. Jobs has no honor left. A “no comment” literally or otherwise would have been much more appropriate.
Aside from ethical/moral implications, it all comes down to trust for me. If a company says “We are absolutely positively not doing [x]” and it ends up that they are doing it, then I think less of that company, am less apt to invest in it, and think less, too, of that company’s principals (and principles).
Whilst idealogicially I agree with Adam, “no comment” doesn’t really cut it anymore. If it doesn’t reveal every detail, it will often leak enough.
Flat out lying is the only way to mask the scent. Of course it only works the once. The next time Mr Jobs says no we are absolutely not doing that you’re not going to be able to take him at face value.
It’s a one-time trump card, Apple have just got to hope that the iPod Video was the product worthy of it.
When I buy buy a product for my home, I donot care what its CEO is saying. I donot care what are the future directions of that company. I need a good product. iPod is not a business procurement. This is not CIO procuring ERP. In that case the vendor giving wrong directions might have been bad. I need superior quality music and movie to rejuvinate me.
Thank you Mr Jobs. Do not tell the “Me too” copycats out there about your vision. They donot deserve it. They will make cheap remakes, flood the market with it and kill your superior product. If I give wrong emailid to spammers I think I am doing a very good job. I donot mind more lies from Mr Jobs. And more satisfying soul touching innovations. “An apple a day keeps the IT junks away”.
And as for Nick’s comment “he’s a smart businessman”, I would like to state that this is more of a “creator’s lie” than a “businesman’s lie”.