Enjoy the Keynote, I will now!

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/f27853y2/event/index.html?internal=fj2l3s9dm

OK, this was a hard one. Took quite a while to find out where Steve Jobs would head next while trying to hide from being shadowed. On the other hand quite obvious: hiking through the Himalaya seeking enlightment for the next amazing products with Jonathan Ive, his chief designer.


Thanks to Saurabh for sending that in!

I thought I had almost caught him, but in the last second SJ hops into his private jet and flies to warmer regions. OK, see you at the Pharao’s!

Thanks to Kitty for sending that in.

Looks like el Stevo does not want to be shadowed and runs away. But hiding in the Antarctica, slightly exaggerated! I’ll not give up though…

Thanks to Will for sending that in!

Remember 10 days ago? Some fake individual making some rather nasty statements about MBAs?

MBAs are not creative… yawn, I stopped counting how many times I heard this. You want some more platitudes like this? Here you are Fakie:

• “If you know Pivot tables in Excel you don’t need an MBA” (bleah, Pivot tables, who is more boring here?)

• “Silicon Valley doesn’t like MBAs. If you are from Stanford you’re tolerated” (yeah, like I don’t know anything about science and tech…)

But my all-time favourite cliché still is: MBAs are not creative. Take this video Steve!

Thanks to the Stream C of the MBA class of 2009. You are great, I would never have done something like that (and that may actually be better for my public image) without you!

So this is you, fake Steve? On CNN commenting the company which is not yours…

Technorati Tags: Fake Steve

I fully agree with Fake Steve. And all the comments to my blog, yes I am with you: screw the MBAs, let business be done by the enlightened only. Only visionaries can do business. Only creative minds are true business leaders. Only what grew in a garage can change the game.

MBAs should and will end up like this:

Technorati Tags: MBA, Fake Steve

My Mac-fanatic classmates definitely want me to do this shadowing, too. It’s actually pretty impressive to walk on campus of a business school and see how many Macs are used, since the folks on the picture are actually only a small sample of the Mac user base here.

OK, not in any way as impressing as those guys, but this is a business school, remember? Business - the realm of the Borg, where the other Steve has most of the market share and where I also was forced to use THE UGLY OS before getting back to school. No more ugly here.

Thanks to all of you who showed up!

It’s more than a week now, enough time to reflect about the visit to school of the other Steve: Borg Steve, M$ Steve, Crazy Jump and Scream Steve, Squirt Steve or just Steve Ballmer.

So what did he talk about? The 10 day reflection didn’t really help to figure out if it was relevant. Agreed, the other Steve has a pretty impressive track record. Joined M$ in 1980 and went up all the way with them. No worries for his retirement, I think.

But what did he say? Oh, yeah, about leadership and what that means at M$. Leadership is about long term goals. Good. The examples? The big M$ successes: Windows (1.0 sucked, 2.0 sucked, 3.0 was a success), the browser war and games (XBOX). Now what is common in all of these examples? I bet Microsoft was able to be successful in all of these markets just because they have such amounts of cash that they can afford to have any long term strategy they want. And what else is a pattern in these examples? Pushing (or trying to push in the case of XBOX) a superior product out of the market by sheer financial, marketing and other power, some of them investigated by antitrust authorities.

So, let’s sum it up: long live long term strategies, provided you have the financial muscles to support them. Very easy, Borg Steve.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Steve Ballmer

From somebody who must know I received the following statement “He [Steve] doesn’t work the way most CEOs work”.

I am quite sure that what I would learn from Steve Jobs wouldn’t be management best practices. Actually I think that some of the things he does are pretty high on the list of “Don’ts” for effective leadership. If the stories about him are only halfway true, he is probably not an easy person to work for. Perfectionist to a degree of obsession, people who do not live up to his standards are doomed. Other people’s ideas have a tough stand if they are to survive a presentation to El Jobso. It even seems that his employees deliberately show him first their worst work knowing that the first idea presented would be rejected by default.

Not really what you would want to learn, I agree. And definitely not what they teach you at business school.

But what makes him successful then? Is it that in the meantime he can rely on a team of trusted people who do the work and “only” need him to provide the vision? Or is he pushing his people so hard because Apple is an extension of himself and only the best and the perfect thing is good enough? I would gladly sacrifice seeing effective leadership in action and trade it with understanding the kind of dynamics that keeps Apple rolling…