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Cook is to Apple like Balmer was to Microsoft.

by ProAm 5y ago

colinmhayes 5y ago
Balmer kind of blew it for microsoft though. Cook is doing well enough.
- adventured 5y ago
  Ballmer didn't do much to harm Microsoft, he sales-managed the company - Microsoft increased in size considerably during his tenure. Sales went from $23 billion to $86 billion during the Ballmer years, a radical increase for an already large company. One can certainly give credit to Gates instead, perhaps, however Ballmer still didn't botch it. Azure and cloud Office were born during the Ballmer years as well, those were initiatives during his years that have been perfected under Nadella (who is a dramatically better product CEO). I consider Nadella's willingness to abandon the Windows religion as the single greatest contribution any CEO has made to Microsoft since the peak Gates years. The worst you can say about Ballmer is that during his reign Microsoft didn't take over the world by grabbing search and mobile. Which was a near impossible task, no company can or should own everything in such a way. I do believe if Ballmer had kept control for a longer period of time (another ten years or so), the risk would have increased of Microsoft getting permanently Oracle'd culturally. It wasn't entirely a bad thing to have a strong insider as a hand in the post Gates years (maybe a good question is: was there anybody else in 1999-2000, in the upper tiers of management, that would have been better fit for the task).
  - npunt 5y ago
    I think different eras require different types of leaders that sit on the explore/extract axis. Product leaders (the 'explore' end) are there to define product categories, while Sales leaders (the 'extract' end) are there to win in product categories. In the 70s, components were expensive and thus the market was mainframes and big company sales, so required a sales leader to extract the most, and the product could be average (like IBM, HP). In the early 80s, components were getting cheap enough to be affordable by regular people, so a product leader was needed to define the personal computing sector, as the product could not be average (not Commodore, TI, or IBM PC). In the late 80s - 90s, commoditization meant it was about capturing the value of the personal computing sector, so it required a sales leader to extract the most, and the product could just be average (like Windows, beige PCs). In the late 90s - 00s, it became cheap enough to start internet companies at scale and opened up an entire market, so it required product leaders to define the core internet offerings of cloud, social media, search, and ecommerce, and the product couldn't be average (not Yahoo, Myspace, or co-lo ISPs). In the mid 00s, components were getting small & powerful enough, so it required a product leader to define the mobile computing sector, and the product couldn't be average (not Nokia, Blackberry, Win Phone). In the 10s - now, with mobile and internet now defined, it required sales leaders to extract the most and the product could be average (like Android). Jobs was a success when product vision was necessary (early 80s, late 90s-00s), and a failure when it was not (late 80s-90s). Ballmer was a success when sales/extraction was necessary (90s) but a failure when it was not (the 00s), as I consider not leveraging a leading market position into multiple adjacent trillion dollar business sectors a failure. Cook has been a success for the past decade because the market really needed someone to execute well on the things that were just defined (mobile devices). According to the above theory, it should have been the decade of Android, but Apple's execution has been so much more competent than Google's that they ran away with it.

Cook is to Apple like Balmer was to Microsoft.

by ProAm 5y ago

Cook is to Apple like Balmer was to Microsoft.

colinmhayes 5y ago

Balmer kind of blew it for microsoft though. Cook is doing well enough.

adventured 5y ago
Ballmer didn't do much to harm Microsoft, he sales-managed the company - Microsoft increased in size considerably during his tenure. Sales went from $23 billion to $86 billion during the Ballmer years, a radical increase for an already large company. One can certainly give credit to Gates instead, perhaps, however Ballmer still didn't botch it. Azure and cloud Office were born during the Ballmer years as well, those were initiatives during his years that have been perfected under Nadella (who is a dramatically better product CEO). I consider Nadella's willingness to abandon the Windows religion as the single greatest contribution any CEO has made to Microsoft since the peak Gates years. The worst you can say about Ballmer is that during his reign Microsoft didn't take over the world by grabbing search and mobile. Which was a near impossible task, no company can or should own everything in such a way. I do believe if Ballmer had kept control for a longer period of time (another ten years or so), the risk would have increased of Microsoft getting permanently Oracle'd culturally. It wasn't entirely a bad thing to have a strong insider as a hand in the post Gates years (maybe a good question is: was there anybody else in 1999-2000, in the upper tiers of management, that would have been better fit for the task).
- npunt 5y ago
  I think different eras require different types of leaders that sit on the explore/extract axis. Product leaders (the 'explore' end) are there to define product categories, while Sales leaders (the 'extract' end) are there to win in product categories. In the 70s, components were expensive and thus the market was mainframes and big company sales, so required a sales leader to extract the most, and the product could be average (like IBM, HP). In the early 80s, components were getting cheap enough to be affordable by regular people, so a product leader was needed to define the personal computing sector, as the product could not be average (not Commodore, TI, or IBM PC). In the late 80s - 90s, commoditization meant it was about capturing the value of the personal computing sector, so it required a sales leader to extract the most, and the product could just be average (like Windows, beige PCs). In the late 90s - 00s, it became cheap enough to start internet companies at scale and opened up an entire market, so it required product leaders to define the core internet offerings of cloud, social media, search, and ecommerce, and the product couldn't be average (not Yahoo, Myspace, or co-lo ISPs). In the mid 00s, components were getting small & powerful enough, so it required a product leader to define the mobile computing sector, and the product couldn't be average (not Nokia, Blackberry, Win Phone). In the 10s - now, with mobile and internet now defined, it required sales leaders to extract the most and the product could be average (like Android). Jobs was a success when product vision was necessary (early 80s, late 90s-00s), and a failure when it was not (late 80s-90s). Ballmer was a success when sales/extraction was necessary (90s) but a failure when it was not (the 00s), as I consider not leveraging a leading market position into multiple adjacent trillion dollar business sectors a failure. Cook has been a success for the past decade because the market really needed someone to execute well on the things that were just defined (mobile devices). According to the above theory, it should have been the decade of Android, but Apple's execution has been so much more competent than Google's that they ran away with it.