iPhone users may be “wall huggers” according to BlackBerry CEO John Chen, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not taking a page or two out of the Apple playbook.
Describing his vision for BlackBerry in a recent interview with the New York Times, Chen compared his present situation to that of Steve Jobs returning to a beleaguered Apple in the late-1990s.
Of course, BlackBerry and Apple couldn’t be in more different positions here in 2014 (not least because Apple is more reliant on the success of the iPhone than ever, while Chen is moving away from his focus on consumer handsets).
But it’s once again interesting to note that — even among his business rivals — Jobs’ strategic approach for Apple business is still the go-to story when it comes to corporate turnarounds.
And with good reason, too.
Source: New York Times
Via: BerryReview
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
7 responses to “John Chen Thinks He Can Save BlackBerry The Same Way Jobs Saved Apple”
Steve Jobs didn’t focus on his customers base, he focused Apple on products. He famously said that people don’t know what products they need, you have to show to them what they need.
How can focusing on customers create innovation with products that customers don’t know they need?
I think Chen doesn’t get Jobs and basing his strategy on it could be a little risky.
@Emilio – Jobs WAS all about customers. The products arose out of serving the customers’ needs: not just their existing needs, but their future needs — they ones they didn’t already know they wanted. That’s what he meant by “people don’t know what products they need, you have to show to them what they need”.
Exactly but what you say moves focus from customers to products. The article says that new blackberry ceo will focus on current customer base like Jobs did, but Jobs didn’t.
Jobs focus was customer needs, more than so future needs, not current customer base but future customer base.
The focus is on products, great products that satisfy unmet needs, not current customer base needs. It’s a look forward not a look at and looking forward, not having reference points, your focus is on products.
Emilio,
I agree with you 100%. Very few people understand the concept and that leaves others competing and copying. Cook said it in the simplest form: “People love Surprises” Which means Apple works on things the people don’t know they need. — This is not totally connected, but I believe when Apple developed the App store,, that too was a surprise and that is exactly when the real innovation began. Talented and very creative young software developers came out of the woodwork. Software was dead until apple open the door to everyone single creative mind in the world. They now had a distribution channel to deliver things “People didn’t know they wanted”
I think that you are quoting Jobs out of context. The one thing that Jobs did, more than most of his peers at Silicon Valley, was to place the enduser at the centre of everything that Apple did.
Jobs is famous for spending tons of money on ensuring that customers would make an emotional connection with Apple products. He famously spoke of how a person feels when they use an Apple product for the first time. He used the word “delight” lots of times to describe how Apple wants its customers to feel when they used Apple products.
Yes, he was extremely secretive… but this was part of his attempts to “delight” and “surprise” customers. And yes, he strongly felt that when you are inventing something new, you cannot ask the customer if they want something that they do not yet understand how it will enhance their lives. So he instead focused Apple in trying to understand and anticipate its customers needs, feelings, emotions, etc. better than any other company in Silicon Valley, so that the products its produced would end up being the products that customers did not know that they could not live without… until they used it for the first time.
Yes, but future endusers, that’s the key.
If your current user buy iPods, why create and sell an iPod disruptor like the iPhone? He was looking at new customers as well at new needs of current customer base, so he was focused on new products and not on existing customers like every one else.
John Chen is just as doomed as the prior Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins was and just as confident of being successful, only Heins wasn’t. Insulting iPhone users with disingenuous comments about battery life that aren’t true won’t help him much either. Just another cock-sure CEO on his brief honeymoon without a real plan who will soon be flailing, get served up a heapin’ helpin’ of crow and finally drop kicked & thrown out by the scruff of his neck as the doofus he is.