Don't Diss the MBA

One of my first blog posts was in praise of Joel Spolsky whose insights into the software sector from both a business and technology perspective are invaluable. But last month Joel wrote an article for Inc magazine on commissions, taking two opportunities to blame poor commission schemes on corporate MBAs:

I can picture the M.B.A. who worked at corporate headquarters. I bet he reaped a big bonus for coming up with an incentive program that dramatically increased the sales of the high-profit silicone spray.

Meanwhile, did anybody notice that the sales of shoes fell by about the same amount?

Or that I started buying my shoes on the Internet?

Sure, blame the MBA for the success of Zappos!

And then:

...Instead of buying the exciting new products I wanted, I was hurled into a mass of people scamming one another -- and all because of stupid, perverse commission systems that seemed like good ideas to the M.B.A.'s back at corporate.

Why Joel has chosen to single out this with a postgraduate degree in business is beyond me. During my MBA class Managing People for High Performance (MPFHP) [see description of the class] we learned of the pitfalls of poor incentive systems, as well as scheme to motivate people through a sophisticated, multi-tiered reward system and to develop them through feedback, not to mention consideration to

• organizational structure and design
• investment in training
• impact and analysis of corporate culture

and lighting the fire to make implement these changes in a dysfunctional organization.

Joel shouldn't blame the business school graduate (or degree) for the demise of companies with poor incentive schemes; he should be engaging MBAs and MBA students to further improve his company, and to articulate and enhance what makes his people high performers.

There will be some MBA students looking to analyze companies in the MPFHP class beginning in Term 1, 2009. I suggest any company skeptical of MBAs to engage the school for these projects.

Reflections on Marketing Class: Using Apple as a Case Study in Marketing Channels

Today in my marketing class at Melbourne Business School, we examined distribution channels vis-à-vis marketing. Not surprising, we examined the distribution of music, tracing it from a technological standpoint (vinyl to MP3) and its channels (independent shops to iTunes).

The lecturer's main point with regards to Apple's success was the control over the hardware, software, and content of their "ecosystem" which allows them to control the channels of music distribution. While I don't disagree with Apple's dominant position, I take issue with some of comments and perceptions with regard to Apple's technology approach that were made in passing.

Primarily, the point was made that Apple is successful because their system is "closed", as compared with Microsoft that must struggle to handle software from a multitude of vendors. In fact, the underlying assumption, it seems, was that you simply could not develop any custom software for a Mac. Of course, this is simply not true.

Let me briefly explore the development options for both systems.

Unlike Windows where developers need to spend hundreds of dollars on software development products like Visual Studio, all Macs come bundled with X-Code, their development environment for building Mac software. One could argue that this alone makes it easier for a developer to create software for a Mac compared to a Windows PC.

Of course, it doesn't stop there. There was many who would argue that the Mac development environment is superior to Windows in other respects. The Cocoa framework seems to be a very elegant paradigm for developing applications, and Mac applications can often be created without writing any code. This doesn't mean anyone can create software for a Mac, but it does mean that more software can be created faster with fewer defects. (As an aside, Automator for Mac does mean that some tasks can be automated by someone without any development knowledge, and there simply isn't anything like it on Windows).

Steve Jobs understood the benefits of having a superior development environment (as well as other marketing principles such as segmentation, targeting and positioning) as demonstrated on this now-famous video from when he was at Next:

This philosophy was brought to Apple when they purchased Next, and brought Jobs back into the fold. Mac OS X is based on Next technology.

In class, it was also mentioned that the iPhone is Apple's first device which supports third-party applications. This, too, is not true (although it is the first iPod which can supports third-party applications). The Newton supported application development,although I don't know if it was a good environment or not.

Finally, Apple has success not just on Macs, but also on PCs with their iTunes software, showing they can success even when they don't control the hardware. Microsoft, too, has had success on Macs. Internet Explorer was highly regarded, and Office for Mac is sometimes regarded as superior to its Windows counterpart.

In summary, I'm making the point that Apple computers and devices are not closed systems; they do support software development, and provide a robust environment at that. Steve Jobs not doubt continues to realize the contribution that software developers make to the value proposition of a computing platform.