In Businessmen Have No Taste I, I hypothesized that Passion and Taste are necessary to create great products.
In this article, I will begin to discuss Taste. Let’s start with a couple quotes.
Steve Jobs once said
“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is — I don’t mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their product ehm and you say why is that important — well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that’s where one gets the idea — if it weren’t for the Mac they would never have that in their products and ehm so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success — I have no problem with their success, they’ve earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.”
To summarize Mr. Jobs: Microsoft has no taste which means they make third rate products. And he implies taste has something to do with having original ideas.
The second quote is from the under-recognized business thinker, Russell Ackoff (emphasis added):
“Teaching cannot produce great leaders precisely because leadership is primarily an aesthetic ability. The most schools can do is provide some of the tools and techniques usable in creative work required of leaders, but they cannot create creativity. For example, one can be taught to draw, sculpt, compose, or write better than one would without being taught, but one cannot be taught to do so creatively with excellence — to become an artist…
… Corporate managers who, when presented with a problem, want to know what their bosses would expect or like. This approach to problems precludes creativity because creativity is the production of solutions that are unexpected. Leaders are driven by ideas, not by the expectations of others. They are skillful at finding ways to beat a system, not surrendering to it…”
To summarize Mr. Ackoff: You cannot teach leadership because it is primarily an aesthetic quality. That is, leadership is primarily about having good taste. And like Mr. Jobs, he implies that good taste has something to do with having original ideas.
What is taste?
Do some people have more than others?
Why are there so many bad products?
Is it actually important to have taste?
Can it be taught?
How does it relate to passion?
Is taste objective or subjective?
_This series is continued in Part 3
Taste seems (at least in this context) to be equivalent to “popular aesthetic” or “commercially successful popular aesthetic.” Commerce meets art and philosophy, but too seldom, and uneasily. Taste is taught (relatively successfully, I believe) at places like Cooper Union or MIT, along with technology, which helps to manifest taste in the world. Bringing the products of taste to market, however, falls within the realm of economics and business.
I think businessmen have no taste because they start and end with profit, to the exclusion of aesthetics, art or philosophy. How many tycoons have humanities degrees?
@Tony
Steve Jobs took a course in calligraphy, a course that does take some taste to appreciate, and incorporated it into his system. Because Microsoft was so kind to borrow this great idea and incorporate it into Windows, everybody now knows the joy of proportional fonts [although, I'm not sure about Ubuntu users].
I know CEOs who care not for taste [and it shows in their products]. The world is governed by people for whom money, and lots of it, is the only motivation. They will scoff at people with a humanities degree for not having ‘marketable skills’, but their homes are not bare and they don’t listen to CDs with webcasts of the revenue forecast. Taste seems like something they buy rather than actually have it themselves.
/not scoffing at CEOs. If it was my talent I’d prefer to be one. The hours suck but the money is -way- better.