The essential ingredient to Apple isn't the consistent, stylized aesthetic, or the expense, or any of that. The essential ingredient is a charismatic dictator who says "this is what we're doing" and makes the company focus on it. It's usually a very bad business model, because dictatorship almost never works, but it does depend on the dictator.
And there's also no good way of choosing a dictator--someone with Jobs' force of will either makes himself the dictator, or you have to use some sort of collaborative process. No one at Apple sat down and said "let's put Steve in charge again", Steve heard that they were shopping for an operating system, called them up, and spent the next year or two taking over the company.
And if someone makes himself your dictator, he's not always very good at it. Jobs himself almost ran two companies into the ground before his business sense was properly calibrated. You don't just have to have a dictator, you have to have a dictator who knows what to do.
Most of us agree that enlightened absolutism is the best form of government. However, so far nobody solved the problem of ensuring a steady supply of good kings.
By the way - its not just apple. Any company is essentially a dictatorship. But most of dictators are scared or clueless so they rely on layers of committees upon layers of committees to do their work.
What I took from the article is that getting a product to market at McDonalds is hard - because of logistics behind getting all the ingredients to the restaurants in time AND getting through all the layers of people who don't want to take (or cant) responsibility.
"By the way - its not just apple. Any company is essentially a dictatorship. But most of dictators are scared or clueless so they rely on layers of committees upon layers of committees to do their work."
That's something else--I don't know the best word for it, but something like aristocracy or something. In fact, a lot of "corporate politics" boil down to, essentially, squabbling lords and nobles playing for power.
And there's also no good way of choosing a dictator--someone with Jobs' force of will either makes himself the dictator, or you have to use some sort of collaborative process. No one at Apple sat down and said "let's put Steve in charge again", Steve heard that they were shopping for an operating system, called them up, and spent the next year or two taking over the company.
And if someone makes himself your dictator, he's not always very good at it. Jobs himself almost ran two companies into the ground before his business sense was properly calibrated. You don't just have to have a dictator, you have to have a dictator who knows what to do.