Sunday Posts

We have two Jobs: One, the magical creator of iPhone, and even more, of the whole iGeneration, whose life story is one of a visionary, one that stayed steadfast through various failures and ultimately prevailed. The other is, of course, much more human, with all the failings, tempers and tantrums, who refused to accept parenthood of his own daughter and made life miserable for his colleagues at Apple so much that he managed to get fired from his own company. This latter story makes him no less visionary, but just a bit less perfect! The perfect millennium man, the first story eventually overshadowed the second story at the turn of the century, as the second coming of Jobs - his very successful return to Apple and making it the most valuable company in the world - played out, helped no less by his Cancer survival and finally, death. One can say I was watching Steve Jobs, a very good movie with Michael Fassbender as the lead. I am slightly weary of hero worship, and therefore, woul...

As a trained marketer, my default position is - we must start with the customer! I have taken this as an article of faith, a common sense position that underlie all businesses, that businesses exist to solve the problems of the customers. That lasted till I started putting it into practice. The customers I met either did not care to talk to me or wanted me to give a solution. The entrepreneurs I met told me that the customers do not know what they want (quoting Steve Jobs, I figured out). And, the marketers, I realised, were all telling me that it is about telling the customer they are getting what they want, while giving them what we want to give them. I know this is cynical, but this is exactly what it feels like. True, we get to hear about companies which love their customers. But, once you have been inside the marketing box, it is hard to know what is for real. And, besides, even if some companies do and we get to hear about them, we get to hear about them simply as they are ...