The wilderness period in tech
We’ve all had those moments where we broke from expectations.
- Haruki Murakami tries a serious, traditional novel with Norwegian Wood.
- That point in the James Bond mythos where space opera was so popular that Moonraker was unavoidable.
- Your favorite band that briefly decided to try synthesizers in the 80s.
- NES games (Castlevania, Zelda, Mario) that tried to break the mold in their first sequel by going radically different.
- That weird stage of KISS where Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley teamed up with Eric Carr and Vinnie Vincent.
I kinda generally like the period of time where people find themselves by intentionally getting lost. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I think there’s an exploration process that I find intriguing in and of itself.
I think we need to realize that we’re not going to create perfect little products at all times. Like isn’t all about pretty little things that are flawless.
One of my very first posts here was a pseudo-review of Apple: The First 50 Years. It was a great book, but it was worshipful. It told the tale that wanted to be mythologized. We have a beginning, middle, end, and second coming of Steve Jobs, who followed an obsession of flawless, pretty little products his whole life.
There's a gap, though; that gap was the exile of Steve Jobs himself, which is exactly what I want to see. I want to see how Jobs recalibrated after a brief loss.
I pre-ordered Steve Jobs in Exile and it’s been sitting on my shelf for a while. Every time I look at it, it’s a reminder that I need to put aside a weekend and read it. I had thought that this weekend, an extended Labor Day holiday, would be the perfect time but, alas, some work got in the way.
Honestly, I also wanted to put a dent in Tears of the Kingdom, which I still haven’t finished.
Back to Apple… that’s not to say that Jobs was the only wilderness period. Apple itself was lost and was in need of recalibration. I am intensely interested in the Spindler and Amelio period. Amelio has my sympathies for taking over a sinking ship and desperately making moves to get it above water again.
What I don’t generally understand are the previous CEOs (and CEOs of other companies in crisis) who shed large aspects of the business in order to become a smaller company. One of those beliefs that I carry with me are that you can’t cut yourself into prosperity.
I don’t want to read about the first reign of Disney CEO Bob Iger, which is currently being mythologized in real time. I want to read more about the Bob Chapek transition, and what sort of board and business situation Iger came into his second time around.
How did the most successful companies of today pivot those Tetris blocks to navigate sticky situations when they arose? We can’t just skip to success when we read the tales. We have to see what the wilderness looked like at the time and how the problem solvers eventually carved a path.
