It's all about "customer-driven innovation" at Dell. "We gather requirements directly through tens of thousands of customer interactions daily, organized events, and customer panels."
OK Dell, listening to the customer will get you the small product enhancements, the incremental stuff. But the leaps occur when you aren't listening to the customer.
Jobs knows this well. Apple blocks out the 1,000 not so important things and gives the customer something they need but didn't even know they needed.
And that's one of the big cultural differences between Dell and Apple.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Michael Dell's World
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4 comments:
You are so right about this, Gene. As an example, take the Shuffle. Were consumers asking for a small, cheap way to carry around a good number of tunes, with NO screen? Bet not, but it really struck a chord, didn't it? I wouldn't have thought to ask for any number of features in Leopard, but I'm really glad they're there.
So Michael Dell's world = Jurassic Park ?
There is also the art of misdirection. For several years, SJ deflected questions about adding video capability to the iPod line by answering that people were more interested in music than video for a portable player (while at the same time, the Apple engineers were frantically trying to figure out how to make a battery last long enough to have a good video product). Once the technical hurdles were conquered, the iPod with video was introduced (followed by the iPhone and the iPod touch).
Part of the magic of Apple is managing the product and the expectations, so that they can converge.
Dell should sell the company and pay off the stockholders.
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