Steve jobs on why xerox failed

What Hacker News said

Recommends narfman0 · 2024-09 · on “Ask HN: Kodak, VW, Intel – Why big companies fail?”

Steve Jobs articulated xerox's failure well, which I think applies mostly to kodak, some to intel, and I've no clue about VW. tldr: Sales and marketing were the main groups who could impact the company's bottom line. So those were the folks that got promoted and pushed to the top. When they lead the company, they don't focus on products+innovation. Because they failed to innovate (or capitalize on their innovation - e.g. their gui) competitors did (e.g. apple). They fail to make great products. See [this video] (I recommend watching this, its short!)

Cites da_chicken · 2020-05 · on “Oracle vs. PostgreSQL: First Glance”

They're a victim of their own success. They became a monopoly and the quality of their product stopped mattering. They're an example of Steve Job's comments on Xerox's failure[0]. It happened at Oracle, IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft. It's happening now at Apple, Intel and Google. [0]: [this video]

Cites ksaho · 2020-09 · on “Has Intel lost its mojo?”

Obligatory (Steve Jobs on why Xerox failed): [this video] He summarises the whole process, Intel is now at the sales and marketing people running it.

Cites cletus · 2021-07 · on “Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale”

The Steve Jobs quote on why Xerox failed [1] strikes again. The finance people have taken over Acti-Blizzard and they've been coasting for 10+ years on their original franchises. All we have is annual CoD releases and Blizzrad coasting on their old properties where Blizzrd hasn't had a significant original release in 10+ years. This effort seems like it's part of the ruthless approach to controlling costs that slowly strangle a company from within. I believe WoW is the #2 property (after CoD) at Acti-Blizzard and it's clearly changed from one of delivering a game to simply extracting as much money as possible from each customer much like how almost all mobile games do. The state of Californi

Cites cletus · 2021-08 · on “Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years”

> Does anyone know why this happens? Oh it's easy to explain. Steve Jobs said it best [1]. He talks about innovation at Pepsi being a new bottle. That's what Activision Blizzard is. They have a "monopoly" with their key franchises, most notably CoD and WoW. They just release a new "bottle" every 1-2 years. Game studios are a bit like a large film studio. They don't like the creative process. It's too unpredictable. They want a formula to produce content that can be predicted, projected and tracked. Here's another key point: everything you do as a company either adds to or subtracts from your brand value. For example: Square Enix giving discounted subscriptions and a general mea culpa around

Cites cletus · 2021-09 · on “Netflix is not a tech company (2019)”

Here's the framework I use: "tech companies" are those where tech still plays a significant factor in the growth of the company such that it's important to an executive level. Example: Google is still a tech company. As much as some might view search as "solved" (just like it was when Google was founded I might add), search continues to get better. Tech still plays a significant role in the actual core business (ie advertising) too. I once again return to the Steve Jobs take on why Xerox failed [1]. An effective monopoly devalued the tech such that Xerox became a sales and finance company. So, returning to Netflix. I agree Netflix isn't a tech company anymore because Netflix ultimately is ab

Cites colinmhayes · 2021-09 · on “Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide”

I'm reasonably bullish on intel, but Jobs explained the problem well [this video] When tech companies become a dominant force in their market they lose their ability to innovate, and it's very hard to change culture once that's happened.

Cites gbba · 2022-08 · on “Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7B”

> focus on the basics instead of marketing gimmicks This reminds me of what Steve Jobs said about Xerox[0]. After achieving market leadership in their industry, engineering at iRobot seems to have been pushed aside in the company's decision making process. Is this a consequence of being a publicly traded company? After all, pushing consumables and subscription services requires less capital and makes more money compared to developing a better robot. The $1.7B exit seems like a good outcome for a stagnant (relative to its peers) company. [0] [this video]