【第67回】“Steve Jobs”, Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster, 2011

Even before I started to read this book, I had regarded Steve as an unique and great business person. But after I finished reading it, my feeling was a little bit changed. I started to respect him. What’s the difference between other smart business persons and Steve? I want to show you the reasons from the viewpoint of his character and business strategy.

First viewpoint is about his character. There are three features which I strongly noted.

He did big emphasis on completion of ‘his’ products. Why did he do so? The answer was come from his birth. It is very famous that he was adopted right after he was given birth. From his comment in this book, “Knowing I was adopted may have made me feel more independent, but I have never felt abandoned. I’ve always felt special.” Thinking his birth deeply made him feel some kind of special feeling. And it caused him control whatever products he was engaging.

Next feature is about his attitude to money. At the time Apple went public and he became worth $256 million, he was only 25 years old. As is often the case with people who became millionaire very young, too much money makes his or her passion for business or makes them lazy guys. But Steve was different from these cases. He had strict mind. When he reflected the time of Apple’s going public, he said, “I made a promise to myself that I’m not going to let this money ruin my life.”

This strict mind also faces to other persons. This is why he always lost his temper to his colleagues. He might have huge expectations to them. So, if someone couldn’t satisfy his expectation, he couldn’t stand it, and he couldn’t control his feelings. And also he seemed to have capacity to know other people’s weak points, he sometimes crushed his colleagues at last. On the other hand, some colleague said in this book that “People who were not crushed ended up being stronger.” His mind for completion was a hard test whether he or she lasted to work as his colleague, for good or ill.

Second viewpoint is his business strategy. There are also three features about it.

The first one is about user interface. His core principle of business was to tightly integrate hardware and software. He wanted to control user’s experience of their lives. So he liked to take responsibility for the user interface. Thinking about Apple and Amazon, it is natural for us to take integration approach succeed to make great value chain. But let’s consider the integration strategy at the viewpoint of around 2000. At that time, most professors in famous business schools said that outsourcing is strongly needed. But Steve didn’t care about these advices, and he did it completely.

Second one is using Apple’s small market share. The negotiation with  music companies about launching of iTunes store was very tough. But among the negotiations, he considered Apple’s small market share as a test marketing of digital music selling. For music companies, they could try to sell their own music with little risk. If the test didn’t succeed, they only failed 5% of the customers, and it didn’t cause other 95% people who mainly used Windows OS machines. And if the test succeed, the could destroy file-sharing and piracy services including Napster. His negotiation was based on Win-Win strategy.

The last one is about cannibalizing yourself approach. After 2000, he took cannibalizing approach twice at least. First one is when he launched iPhone. iPhone cannibalized iPod sales, because iPhone included the function of iPod. Second cannibalization was iPad, and it would lessen the sales of laptop made by Apple. The reason why he did them is based on the feeling of obsessing about what could mess us up. For example, he showed the board members example of the digital camera market. Digital camera market was messed up by cell phones which were equipped with cameras.