“Bob Lutz, former vice chairman of product development at General Motors, has an new book coming out this week called Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business,” Mark Gongloff blogs for The Wall Street Journal. “In it he says that GM, and American business generally, has lost its way by focusing too much on making the numbers rather than on making products consumers want to buy.”
He holds up Apple as the example American business should be following, telling The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal: ‘In all of these industries where you are playing with the psyche of the consumer and her perceptual capability, you must have people who understand that industry, understand those consumers, who can put new things in front of the consumer and come up with the next big idea the way that Steve Jobs does with the iPhone, iPod, iPad, iPad 2, and who knows what next. Just pick up an iPhone. It’s an object of beauty. And so is an iPad. You want to own it even if you don’t have a clue what it does. It’s much the same way with cars.'”
“It’s certainly tempting to compare GM to Apple. One’s a failure in the market’s eyes, forced to accept a government bailout. The other has an almost worshipful following on Wall Street, the media and the general public,” Gongloff reports. “They’re the Goofus and Gallant of Corporate America.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dow C.” and “GetMeOnTop” for the heads up.]
