I think that Jobs is the secret simplifying sauce to making a complex system of people — as you put it “marketers, industrial designers, and engineers” and in addition production, sales, and so forth — produce a fabulous product outcome. Companies that have great ideas are a dime a dozen; companies that create great products from those great ideas are entirely rare because of the organizational frictions you raise.

Thus my response to Bruce was that you could have any great product designer (of course there are few) in the role of Ive, and Apple would still create great products because of a person with special leadership skills like Jobs (of which there are even fewer). I guess I’m a believer that strong leadership can simplify organizational complexities. Now, whether living under that kind of demanding leadership is bearable or not is a different question.

Thanks for the question Ira.

I listened to your On Point segment yesterday on XM. Had I been able to call in, I would have asked the question, “In regard to the ‘complexity’ of everyday technologies, to what extent do you think design complexity is the result of organizational dynamics - the intra-corporate negotiations and compromises that take place between marketers, industrial designers and engineers?”