Why NeXT company has not achieved the same success as Apple

Despite the fact that Steve Jobs has achieved success at Apple, both before and after the founding of the NeXT, a software company, this did not become successful. What is the difference between these companies, and why the story is so different?

According to Jonathan Brill, who studied the biography of Steve Jobs, that there were several reasons.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs was a visionary, but he never led the company's operations

And this skill could greatly useful to him in the NeXT. In addition, products that NeXT released at the time, do not always conform to users' expectations, they exceeded the budget and not released in time.

At NeXT had the right idea, but not for the time

Jobs correctly assess the future market - large software companies have been on a horse. But the company's team has been typed incorrectly, and the CEO was a rookie. Were it not for these factors, perhaps, the NeXT would exist to this day.

strong competitors

IBM, Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems at the time had more teams have more money and produced the best products. NeXT could not compete with such giants.

Jobs' ability to anticipate the needs of users was useless

That quality is important, if you lead B2C (business to client) company, not B2B (business to business). In B2B companies, it all boils down to stability and risk reduction.

In the end, NeXT was sold to Apple for $ 400 million. Having made a mistake at Apple, and then in the NeXT, Jobs received a third chance and was able to get back to the former group. And the third time it happened.

(via)