To Err is Human, But to Truly Mess Up Requires a Computer Executive
In their recent joint interview at D5 (video, transcript), Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were both asked what they had learnt from the other. Bill said that he wished he had Jobs’s taste – to much laughter. It is not clear from the video whether he realised that he was mirroring Jobs’s 1996 criticism that Microsoft “has no taste”. Whereas Steve, in the background, and the audience clearly did.
Jobs’s answer was more interesting. He stated that Apple’s original strategy was to “build the whole banana”, and as a result there was not much scope for partnering with other companies. Microsoft, he felt, was excellent at this. Ironically he felt, quite correctly, that the one company Apple has successfully partnered with throughout its history is Microsoft itself.
Another hangover from Apple’s original strategy was its “Not Invented Here” (NIH) syndrome. Apple often tried to create its own, often proprietary, solution for every problem. The company has, as a result missed the market’s desire for interoperability. When Jobs returned to Apple with NeXT’s reverse take-over of the company, he swept away the NIH attitude. Apple sacred cows like Hypercard, OpenDoc and Newton were thrown aside. The original Bondi Blue iMac abandoned Apple’s proprietary I/O ports in favour of Intel’s USB standard. Oddly Apple’s use of USB popularised the technology that was not widely adopted by PC manufacturers. Apple went on to champion and in some cases popularise other technologies not invented by Apple, such as WiFi (Airport), ZeroConf (Bonjour), KHTML and BlueTooth. NIH syndrome is well and truly dead within all but the darkest recesses of Apple.
With the release of the iPhone, Apple seems to have also learnt the lesson of partnering with other companies. Apple has not simply signed an exclusive contract with AT&T but are actively partnering with them to develop their services together, as demonstrated by the iPhone’s Visual Voicemail. More interesting is the partnership with Google, with the Google Maps and YouTube applications taking pride of place on the iPhone home screen. Along with YouTube on AppleTV, Apple’s partnership with Google promises to be a long and fruitful one. However Apple has not been exclusive and has also worked with Yahoo! to add support for Push IMAP, which could provide an open alternative to Blackberry’s push Exchange support.
So what lessons can we learn from this? If I were to identify the biggest mistake in my career so far, it would be that I did not actively network with my past colleagues. Networking in the City (the UK equivalent of Wall Street), for me, smacked of the Old Boy Network – self-promotion by who-you-know, rather than by ability. It felt like something that the incompetent would do to get a new job. I’ve learnt the hard way that in fact the competent can use networking to steer clear of the incompetent, whether it be in recruitment, using third party products and services or just getting things done. It can make a huge positive difference in your professional career. Since leaving the City, I’ve made a concerted effort to re-establish those contacts through LinkedIn.
When I attended Apple’s Developer Conference for the first time last year, I was a little disappointed at how difficult it was to make new contacts. I had seen WWDC as a fantastic opportunity for networking in the Mac development community. However through one of the contacts I did make, I’ve discovered the Mac Software Business community and hang out in the #macsb IRC channel on a daily basis. It turns out you just need to do a little bit of professional internet dating before you meet them in real life!
