via John Gruber. The insightful quote: To be an enterprise company is, in a very real way, to cede a great deal of control over your product line to your custo

via John Gruber. The insightful quote: To be an enterprise company is, in a very real way, to cede a great deal of control over your product line to your customers... Here’s the simple truth: Enterprise hates surprises. It’s not what they want. Enterprise wants predictability. They want to know when, what, how much, and that it will be all new and cool, yet change nothing... And they want to know everything in detail a year ahead of time. I have found this to be very true. To sell to "Enterprise" is to put your customers in control of your product in almost every way. They dictate your schedule, your features, your pricing, everything. And they don't have your success or competitive advantage foremost in their mind. Nor, unfortunately, do they have their success or competitive advantage foremost in their mind. Take the predictability thing. Is that to their advantage? Seemingly, but given the choice between having vendors that surprise me with revolutionary things that change my business for the better or vendors that make the same old things in a predictable way, I would prefer a surprise. But I'm thinking like an owner. The people who buy enterprise software are managers, and their personal success is driven by showing that they can manage, which is measured by predictability. That's the very definition of management in an enterprise: hitting your numbers consistently is worth more than being all over the map but having better numbers than the next guy.