Monday 21 May 2012

12 Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Guy Kawasaki ... ?




I did endup watching this to the end, let's summarise it and see if everything makes sense. I got to agree this guy has some charisma, but this talk is a great example of subtle bullshit, some very nicely made crap hidden under what appears to be facts.




1) Experts are clueless:

Of course they are clueless, then what, listen to yourself ? I believe paying the right gym coach (supposedly an expert) will prevent me from injuries, and that I would get better results than if I do not follow his advice.
A good Entrepreneur will filter out all the crap people say.

One need to rely on experts simply because one cannot build up an expertise in every field. It is their responsibility, though, to juge the pros and cons in order to make the final decision.

Same with execution, Jobs initially teamed up with Woz who was an expert to do the work.

2) Customer can't tell you what they need:
Sure, but it's a good start.. thanks, we won't try to obey to customers, because.. we are experts. explained in point 1)

4) Design Counts:
Ok I give you that one, design does count, the problem though is that people can't design well, Jobs was talented, not only in appreciating good design, but in finding and hiring people who can make good design. Did he teach you how he did that ?

5) Big graphics, big fonts.
Yes, Jobs was great in communication, his slides were bare titles to what he could verbally explain and demonstrate the right way. Did he teach you how he did that ?

6) Jump curves, not better sameness.
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Dell all did what was already there, but they did it better, I don't even think they did it twice better, they simply made it right, they took what already existed and shaped it to fit what people really want.
Kawasaki, I would love you to fund the revolutionary Time Machine I'm working on...

7) If It works or doesn't work, that's all that matters.
Yea of course, paying a fee to Adobe to play Flash on the iPhone had nothing to do with the phone looking stupid when accessing flash only websites.. work or doesn't work ?

8) Value is different from Price.
Hmm this statement didn't apply to Jobs when seeing the value for its customer to play Flash ? OK Value is different than Price, but surely marking a product correctly is a bit more subtle than this.

9) A Players hire A players.
Some guy asked you the question at the end, then who hire B players ? "I don't know" is enough of an answer to you ?? just skip the Q/A thing altogether then,
And I give you the answer: People hire the best they can get.
If the statement was only to explain that A engineer want to hire B engineers to stand out, then explain to us how Jobs did to prevent his engineers to do that.

12) Some things need to be believed to be seen.
I do believe in my Time Machine, do you see it ?

Skipping the other things Jobs taught you as really this was becoming silly. Surely he did teach you to use your charisma to convince people to believe you whatever comes out of your mouth.

I'm happy you take your children to Cinema using some great unique website who obviously oblige theatres to sign some abusive exclusivity contract - but this is not innovation, this is using anti competitive strategies to make money offering a very simple service, which by the way customers did know how to tell that they wanted it.

Thanks Kawasaki, but entrepreneurs will need to continue to learn by themselves how to run their busyness.


No comments:

Post a Comment