Meetings with Cook could be terrifying. He exuded a Zenlike calm and didn't waste words. "Talk about your numbers. Put your spreadsheet up,"
Okay, why in the world are we, supposed 21st century intellectuals, supposed to be looking at a leader who asks for quantification and hard data as somehow unusual and harsh? If I assume that the writer knows his audience well, implications of this for how WSJ readers generally think is, frankly, breathtaking.
We don't live in the world wishfully imagined by the Romantic Era! We live in a world ruled by mathematically-based laws best understood from first principles. The "Rule of Cool" is not going to suspend the laws of physics and economics for you just because you greatly impress a bunch of bipedal primates on a particular planet. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV3sBlRgzTI >
This is especially true for startups! However many of us fail to comprehend this because we forget that human beings are not omniscient. Just because we don't yet understand how market forces are going to respond to an entirely new product category or an entirely new class of transaction or entirely new kind of company doesn't mean that the laws of nature and economics have been suspended for the rule of cool. It just means our squishy little chemical-bag brains haven't processed the new situation enough to codify it and share the information through our culture. Not fully understanding something Does Not Justify Woo! (And disturbingly, you don't have to search very hard in the startup scene to find some programmer-branded or startup-branded woo!)
Ignore this at your peril. The Rule of Cool won't protect you any more than respecting pilot seniority kept Asiana Airlines Flight 214 from crashing. (Korean American here, and yes, the example makes me get angry and cringe.)
Because it fits the narrative. Tim Cook is being cast as the operations guy that may be a good manager but isn't a transformative leader that Steve Jobs was.
The title of her book is Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs. This is a book that could only be written 5-10 years from now, but who knows where Apple could be then. She's striking while the iron is hot; if Apple is irrelevant and no one is interested in the company in 10 years, she wouldn't sell nearly as many books.
Okay, why in the world are we, supposed 21st century intellectuals, supposed to be looking at a leader who asks for quantification and hard data as somehow unusual and harsh? If I assume that the writer knows his audience well, implications of this for how WSJ readers generally think is, frankly, breathtaking.
We don't live in the world wishfully imagined by the Romantic Era! We live in a world ruled by mathematically-based laws best understood from first principles. The "Rule of Cool" is not going to suspend the laws of physics and economics for you just because you greatly impress a bunch of bipedal primates on a particular planet. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV3sBlRgzTI >
This is especially true for startups! However many of us fail to comprehend this because we forget that human beings are not omniscient. Just because we don't yet understand how market forces are going to respond to an entirely new product category or an entirely new class of transaction or entirely new kind of company doesn't mean that the laws of nature and economics have been suspended for the rule of cool. It just means our squishy little chemical-bag brains haven't processed the new situation enough to codify it and share the information through our culture. Not fully understanding something Does Not Justify Woo! (And disturbingly, you don't have to search very hard in the startup scene to find some programmer-branded or startup-branded woo!)
Ignore this at your peril. The Rule of Cool won't protect you any more than respecting pilot seniority kept Asiana Airlines Flight 214 from crashing. (Korean American here, and yes, the example makes me get angry and cringe.)