The Steve Jobs Way 6 - Right Organization

 This chapter is about the right organization structure, right incentive, right channels - aspects that professor Christensen talks about a lot.

This chapter's hypothesis is that a company should be organized by product rather than by function. Rationale being functional organization will try to standardize and not cater to the different needs of different product. This books talks of Mac, Lisa and Apple II. It doesn't really talk of how each one's need is different. But the chapter is more on how John Sculley wanted to adopt approaches similar to consumer goods focusing on distributors and retailers which was not working for Mac. The retailers obviously are not incentivized to sell Mac with no need for peripherals and no training needs thus giving them no scope for revenues. This is the aspect of choosing the right channel. Traditional channels will not favor innovative products. And from blue ocean stand point this is the implementation aspect.

We see how Steve Jobs wanted to come up with unconditional marketing and has been able to pull it off. An advertisement playing upon George Orwell's 1984 during the super bowl. To be honest, except that it was bold and attracted attention, I didn't see any take away. Maybe the take away was that product team liked the message and the broader company didn't get it. Which aligns with the idea of organizing the company around the product and don't constraint them with the processes of the rest of the organization. 

The advise from Lee Iacocca to go for a direct to customer is also in line with the product specific approach. We can see this in terms of integrated architecture. The distributors, the company wide marketing etc. are more modular architecture elements. 

As with the earlier chapter often the strategy is lost in hero worship of Steve Jobs. His charism, his determination etc. These aspects while appealing are not helpful in a scientific analysis of what makes a business work.