Another MBA type killing a great tech company. I don't understand why it doesn't occur to these boards that engineers/technologists/innovators should lead tech companies. For some reason they can't imagine that technology can save a technology company. It wasn't some genius business maneuver that turned Apple into the biggest company in the world, it was genius technology.
Not to discount the idea that tech companies should be run by innovators, but Apple wouldn't be one of the biggest companies in the world if not for its ingenious vertical integration, which ensures that competitors are always a year or more behind. A few famous examples include the way they temporarily monopolized the supply of a crucial type of flash memory for iPods, and still control the entire supply of certain touchscreen sizes for tablets. They provide the up-front capital to build factories in China to produce these new technologies in exchange for exclusivity. And after the exclusive period is over, Apple pays a discounted price, which means that their competitors actually subsidize Apple's products. There are plenty of other examples of operational genius within Apple along the same lines. Without those genius business maneuvers, they would probably be a successful company, but certainly not the biggest company in the US. The key thing is that this innovation in business ops is in the service of grand technological vision. Ops without vision dooms a company in the long term.
I agree with everything you say. And yet, Apple is not run by MBAs or MBA culture - it is being run by a person whose roots are in technology, liberal arts, LSD and hare krishna, and is a college dropout. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Early_years is illuminating about who this person is.
The main reason they hire MBA types instead of engineers is because the main purpose of the company is to make money. A lot of MBA's don't take a long view on technology for various reasons. Thus, when every product you make isn't shipping a million pieces a month, these guys get worried and make stupid moves. In HP's case, they made a succession of stupid moves.
Apple does have genius technology, but you can't underestimate the influence of Steve Job's eye for design in the success of Apple products.
"Technologist" is sufficiently squishy that I can't make an argument against it, but I can cite Stross in "Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing." Stross has a good anecdote about how Jobs didn't know how to use an email client when he was running NeXT, and that he would have his secretary print everything out for him.
Fiorina killed it many years ago. Even though she is long gone, the company has been infested with the drones since then. The company will of course linger for decades as an enterprise software/hardware provider. As exciting as SAP.
