Designer's Digest - Steve Jobs on the role of product and marketing people.

Excerpt from a beautiful interview.

If you'd like to watch the whole video here is the link to buy it:

Keep the positive energy and pass this video a long if you think other designers could get inspired by this.

[theformerkaiser]

It’s amazing how well this can be applied to the video game industry of today.

[jbch]

Interviewer: And for our audience, toner is what?
Steve: Toner is toner.

[volaska]

Steve just described the problem with every corporation where I have ever worked. (Yes, I have worked for Xerox) The people with passion and innovation often get fired or leave. Starts at the top and rots the company out from the core.

[gaborevanyics]

Underrated wisdom. Absolutely true in 2020 on hardware and software and for the most gaming industry.

[ashishbhatt]

This is very true for gaming companies today

[khangvutien]

Amazing analysis. How a company like Xerox is so focused on marketing and missed totally the opportunity of the mouse, the windows, and the laser printer, that their staff created.

[bydlaq]

Description of every company of today's. Absolutely brilliant

[amatthew]

"So who ends up influencing the success of [company]? The sales and marketing people, therefore they are the ones who get promoted up, therefore they end up running the company"
"The product people get run out of the decision making forums, and... the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility, the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no conception of a good product versus a bad product, they have no conception of the craftsmanship that is required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product"

_Steve Jobs - 1995_

[digitalconsciousness]

"Toner is what?"
"Toner's what you put into a copier - you know, the stuff that you add?"
"Dumb it down even more for me"
"The black stuff"
lol

[PolarChimm]

Great analysis of the industry, applicable to so many companies and will be forever. Shame it happened to his own as well

[abyssano]

He was truly one of the greatest visionaries...

[John-cldv]

We need to send this to Intel board now, send it to Nvidia next, then AMD to remind them to never go there.

[thaibistroclub]

A prophetic foreshadowing of what Apple has become after he was gone.

[CanadianOptionsTrader]

Great video! We need more creative thinkers, not less!
And the creative thinkers should be given more freedom, not less!
Yes, we still need the bean counters and salespeople, but they should not be making the big decisions.

[duncanreeves]

And then these massive companies lobby the government to give them special privileges and bailouts, while raising the barriers to entry in the market to keep out new competitors. So the natural process of rival companies focusing on making good products and competing is artificially hindered.

You can see companies preemptively doing this as soon as they get big. Like openAI lobbying for the government to require AI companies to get a license to do business... After they already grew without tedious oversight

[dimitrified]

He's talking about Apple as it is right now.

[stefanradebach]

Warcraft 3 Reforged brought me here and in all seriousness Steve's speech here is unfortunately true and an indictment to the corruption of gaming industry where greedy and anti-consumer practices are all too common.

[BoAstrup]

Still true to this day… Boeing anyone?

[drno]

Jobs knew about Xerox and PARC because he was the main beneficiary.

[TioDave]

This is the key to making a good product. If you solve problems for people efficiently they will pay you. Exceed their expectations and come in under budget. Then you don't have to advertise. The key to the budget is reducing overhead. The money these companies waste just shows you how much you are overpaying for their product. Red Bull does it right with something that people who drink red bull would enjoy. I choose not to drink energy drinks, but I appreciate their work. If I ever needed one they'd be first. Monster and rock star also hit the sponsor spot on. Not much else you can do with the drink as a product, but they are more. Red Bull got it right and set a standard.

Avoid adding extra cost to you product and these corporation would not be able to compete. Amazon corned the market on marketplace to home efficiency. Also through taking advantage of the postal service. Find other that provide service with out all the added cost and create a partnership. We need more good people making things.