Well, I would argue that even Apple is not really led by people that are "product driven". Apple sure has great products, but their Sales and Marketing is second to none.
I'm not going to say that Steve was all about Sales and Marketing. Here is what I think really mattered, and I would say you need those things of any leader:
- He cared. He wanted to make a difference, not just be one more offering in a sea of options. Apple customers do not opt in a product, they opt in a lifestyle.
- He had a vision and was able to communicate it. People were inspired by that vision. This is what sets leaders apart.
So sales vs product is not really what I pay attention to, despite what Steve Job himself said in this specific case. Great companies do not have those dualities of X vs Y, rather, X & Y come together to make everyone's contribution even greater than what it would be by itself.
We know the FileMaker product to be a great product. I'm not too concerned about that part of things. It is good and will keep getting better. But not all good products end up winning the market. You can look at Beta vs VHS and countless other examples. Good brands are winning markets.
Things need to change for FileMaker to go from a "best kept secret" to something that gets more traction in the market, and if that has not yet happened with the great product we already have, I would dare suggest that getting more market adoption is not going to happen by making any kind of change to the product itself. There are changes that are deserved and will be welcomed, but I do not think they will be so influential in terms of market adoption.
There are a lot of things I hear right now that are refreshing to hear, and I feel like a lot of it "lines up" with one another, that is also good news.
So I guess my answer is no, Steve Jobs is not right. Also, we should note that he talks about companies that either have a simple product (Pepsi Co) and companies who held a monopoly on a market (Xerox) and were complacent about their own situation. I can also guarantee that people handling the logistics of a company like Pepsi can have just as much influence, if not more, than the people involved in sales. When you ship so many drinks in a day, small changes can weigh a ton given the scale it is applied to. Steve Jobs' real warning is about companies that have no incentive to innovate. The leaders who stop to push their company further to increase the value given to customers. Can anyone really say Claris has been holding back on making changes that add value to customers? I don't think so.
Claris is clearly not in either of those situations (simple product or market monopoly holding back).
Bluckbuster LLC aka Bluckbuster Video, after first refusing a partnership with Netflix (year 2000), later saw that it was a significant threat (2004). At the base of it, Blockbuster was not charmed by the subscription revenue model, because it earned so much from late fees it was charging its customers. So in 2004 the CEO wanted to catch up and do 2 two things: discontinue late fees and launch their own digital platform. His board eventually saw this as something too costly, fired him and the new guy (a lieutenant serving under the original CEO) backpedaled all of that. Blockbuster would only survive that 5 more years before filing for bankruptcy. They could have rivaled, challenged and possibly kill Netflix by leveraging all they had and implementing things at the right time. The problem was not about being led by sales or product, but rather, just like what Steve Jobs was pointing to, a lack of vision. (See this article for more on that story.)
In a somewhat distant past, we were given almost nothing aside from the developer's conference: no roadmap, even less of a vision.
In the recent past, we were given product roadmaps and from those, we had to guess where the company what headed, what was the vision and were things lining up or not.
Now, we are told what the vision is and what actions are planned that will make that closer to reality.
I know many can have some disappointments from a vision based webinar when they are coming with expectations that are more "technical" or "product" oriented. But for myself, I see this as a BIG improvement in their communication.
I'll be happy too if they want to add other videos that are showing us what is cooking in the kitchen. But in terms of relevance and importance, I'm much happier with knowing what they are aiming for (or at). My reason for that is this: I can then provide feedback about my own perception of if things really line up or not and can hold them accountable for hitting the target. If all I'm told is "now we are adding this to the product", what does it line up to? Where is accountability?
The only case where we saw some vision being shared in the recent past was about the Workplace Innovation Platform innitiative. I think, despite it being a good description, that the initiative was not the right one. I'm sure they got a ton of feedback about the same. Now they adapt. I like the new vision.