[Info-vax] OT: About Digital and divisions

[Neil Rieck]

On Nov 19, 2:01 am, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> Am in the process of reading the "Book of Jobs", being a good member of
> the Church of Apple :-)
>
> In it, there is a very telling passage that compares Apple with Sony and
> why Apple was able to kill the walkman.
>
> Sony had all the ingredients, the sleek designs for hardware, the music,
>  record label, the distribution etc. But it failed. But it was organised
> into divisions. And this was telling to Jobs "divisions". It divides a
> company.
>
> And because each division had its own requiremenet to be profitable, the
> record labels didn't want to play ball with the electronics to
> cannabilise their own business to let digital downloads.
>
> Apple, with its own "special" CEO and a single P&L for all of the
> company was able and willing to cannabalise sales of one thing to get
> another thing because they coudl see the "big picture".
>
> Reading that passage reminded me of Digital. In its heydays, it had all
> the components, hardware, OS, applications, database, support etc and
> Olsen saw to it that they worked. He knew that compiler folks were
> needed to support the whole platform and developpers etc.
>
> Then came Palmer who organised everything into divisions which had to be
> profitable and then you got lack of vision and stuff got canned left and
> right.
>
> Of course, Digital was always affraid that a new product would
> cannabalise an older/bigger one, so it would put epoxy into a Bi-Bus to
>  castrate a machine to prevent it from competing against a more
> expensive one.
>
> What Steve Jobs said was quite telling: If you're not willing to
> cannabalise your own products when creating a new one, someone else will
> cannabalise it for you.  Looks like Sun cannabalised a lot fo DEC sales
> back in late 1980s.

Based upon the excerpts heard on BBC I am wondering if Job's book
should now be known as "The Book of Jobe" (living on a diet of Apples
+ Oranges, not using deodorant, thinking you can pray-away cancer,
etc.)

Here's my two cents about comparing Apple to Sony. Sony was only
selling players. Apple was selling players and content.

Many people will acknowledge that Job's made more money in Hollywood
(Pixar, etc.) than he ever did manufacturing electronics. It goes
without saying that Jobs' return to Apple also returned Apple to
profitability. But Apple went into the area of uber-profits with
iTunes (which then stimulated even more sales of iPods as well as
supporting other new gizmos like iPhone and iPad). Job's removed the
word "Computer" from the company name in January 2007.

Now there are many people out there (including me) that think Apple
would have not been able to create iTunes had not Jordan Mendelson and
Sean Parker destroyed the music business with Napster. But we can't
ignore the fact that Jobs was now a Hollywood insider and so was
trusted to protect music royalties, copyrights, etc.

To be fair, Sony also became a Hollywood insider (buying Studios,
buying libraries, creating content) but they never attempted something
like iTunes until Apple did it first. Maybe Sony didn't have someone
at the top with a Jobsian Reality Distortion Field.
:-)

NSR