There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business :
Steve Jobs is at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to “build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.”
Then Steve Jobs turned to the rise and fall of various businesses. He has a theory about “why decline happens” at great companies: “The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of product becomes less important.
The company gradually starts valuing the great salesmen, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues.”
So salesmen are put in charge, and product engineers and designers feel demoted: Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company’s daily life. They “turn off.”
IBM and Xerox, according to Steve Jobs, faltered in precisely this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but “they didn’t know anything about the product.”
"When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don't matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off.
- Steve Jobs

In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products.”
Adapted from Peggy Noonan's column "A Caveman Won’t Beat a Salesman" @Peggynoonannyc
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