Steve Jobs - A Sincere and Detailed Interview

I stumbled across this video interview of Steve Jobs from 2010.  He goes into great detail about how the iPhone and iPad were developed, as well as the competition between his company and others - particularly Google, Adobe, and Microsoft.

Notice how throughout the interview Jobs mentions the 'market' and the 'marketplace'.  He eloquently boils down the free market system into the arbiters of success being the consumer.  Jobs understood that the prime authority in the free market is the consumer.  I'm paraphrasing, but he says at one point that "people vote YES when they buy our product and NO when they don't.  Hopefully enough people vote YES and we can come to work the next morning."   It is impossible to distill the marketplace better than that. 

As a worker in an insuffereable bureacracy, I was intrigued by Jobs' comment on how many committees exist at Apple - - zero.  He talks about how Apple is the "world's biggest startup" and it is run like one.  The areas of the company responsible for certain aspects and products work independently - and they meet once a week to compare notes and during those three hours they share progress metrics and ideas.  Key, trusted people have independent authority delegated to them, and they respond positively.  This was music to my ears, because my workplace, the public school system, there are committees started for everything, and nothing gets done.  The 'consumer' loses where I work.

One area where Jobs is counterintuitive to his own ideas is between the 30 minute and 42 minute mark.  He's talking about the new tools that bloggers have, and his attempted 'resurrection' of the press.  He laments the downfall of the NY Times, Washington Post and the Wall St. Journal and fears that we'll become a "nation of bloggers."  He says he feels it is important that these companies thrive and that a free press is necessary for a functional democracy.  Jobs was keenly aware of the disappearing balance sheet of these companies - he uses the terms "hard times."

What is odd in that line of reasoning is that the Mainstream Media he mentions have been tools of the Elite Establishment for roughly the past 100 years, and have tried to control thought and be the Gatekeepers of opinion for about as long.  For a man who had trip wire sensitivity to the needs of the consumer, the looming bankruptcies of the mainstream media should have been a signal to Jobs that the content was substandard, and the consumer didn't (and doesn't) want what they were offering.  The consumer is smart enough to know about what phone and apps he wants, but oddly deficient when it comes to news content.  I found this opinion of Jobs to be incongruent and the perfect example of cognitive dissonance. 

Here is the entire video - it is information rich and worth your time.  Listen to Jobs if you wish to hone your entrepreneurial skills.