Let's pretend the suggestions of the author were adopted by Apple in 1995. They stopped entering new markets. They have a product portfolio that generates $11B ($30B today). That portfolio includes some real winners, like the Pippin, a webtv competitor. (WebTV--another company that clearly didn't need to enter new markets because they're doing fantastic today.)<p>Does anyone really believe this company is viable in 2024? In this scenario, Apple is dead.<p>The author is free to change his mind about what product he wants over time... but there's something wrong with a company that changes products over time? Companies must be free to adapt to the changing preferences of customers. The alternative is corporate death.
Ultimately this is about capital allocation and rates of return. Capital flows into the places where it can be best put to work. If you wish for your investments to yield above inflation, you're a card carrying member of the cult of growth.<p>If Apple decides it will stop growing, it will plow 100% of its profits in share buybacks (I bet op loves those!) and work hard to squeeze costs down. This happens routinely under private equity ownership. It's not as fun as you'd think.<p>The view expressed by the author is naive and shortsighted. Growth is required for society to function. If it doesn't come from Apple, it must come from somewhere else.
>> Apple is not happy that I bought a laptop in 2015 that was so good that it is still working fine 9 years later. And it's also not happy that I bought a phone more than 4 years ago that still does all the things I need it to do. Because they need to make money. More money.<p>Well I'm not so sure about "more" as much about "keep making". And here lays the problem in almost every business on this planet. Everyone needs money to survive and if those money are obtained by selling produce, if that produce doesn't sell, they don't survive. So what do you propose instead?
I'm tired of hearing this opinion because its overly simplistic. Anyone expressing this opinion likely would praise a company for growth through innovation. They don't hate growth, they hate companies who are scrounging for additional price value without adding intrinsic value. If Apple came out with the next device/car/service that was a big value add to our lives I'm sure this opinion doesn't come back up in that instance.<p>Growth mindset is a good thing overall. And sometimes you get growth through pretty shitty means. I can't really throw out "growth" altogether just because a lot of companies employ accountants, MBA executives, and lawyers.
I had a colleague who had recently become a manager ask me "so wait, people always have to be growing and advancing? What if they just got promoted and they want to do that for a while. Or they are happy with what they are doing right now?" I replied that I understood that and I feel like that is a problem everywhere. Everything has to be growing all the time and it's probably not for the better.
To me the bottom line of life is to hold on to the fun stuff that makes you unique and happy. Other people practically hate you and pressure you to do things their way. Every time I "grew" it felt fake, performative, and aimless.
Totally agree. Surprised there's so much hate of this idea in the comments here. Doesn't anyone here value building things to last, contentment, quality, and having enough?
Expecting growth along a single metric like dollars while staying product-offering static is a problem once most of the energy/production/scale optimizations have been implemented. It seems fine that we should expect innovation companies to grow, as in progress, to produce new product classes and improve old ones. I personally don't hope every company is destined to become primarily a stagnant service company.<p>Although I'm pretty sure the pressure to grow doesn't solely come from the outside-in perspective. It feels like internal politics, incentives, and the individuals desires to make their mark results in a shift in priorities in otherwise settled product lines as well.<p>At this point it feels right to switch from calling it growth, to neutrally 'drive'. Assuming some sense of drive not only is useful, but is an necessary feature of humans producing... then if priorities are not oriented directly towards maximizing usability or the quality of product for the end user, it will result in a product being reasonably propelled away from maintaining those. And so it seems to me, it is the priorities not the existence of drive or growth that is the issue to be focused on. I feel trying to establish a culture without drive would be net counter productive.
I think growing !== making your product last shorter. Develop a brand new market like AR VR headset is growing. Develop a new service that people need is growing. Keep growing to compensate for shrinking market for existing business, so that your employee can have a steady job and do what they love and are trained well to do, without churning in the job market is a net gain for society.
Title ought to have been "Endless growth is a mind cancer".<p>When your profits aren't up 20% for the tenth year in a row, you cut costs somewhere, and it's always the workforce that suffers most, due to layoffs. Other things suffer too, like product quality (maybe using cheaper materials maybe built-in obsolescence).
Aswath Damodaran speaks of a life cycle for companies. In his view, companies do decline and shut down after sometime. He makes it seem like a fact of life -- if it's true, then stock markets aren't so terrible after all. The declining companies often pay good (but declining) dividends, and wind up gracefully.
Universal Paperclips comes to mind.... part of the issue is that companies peruse the goal of infinite growth, yet this stands in contrast and contradiction to the economic maxim of "wants are unlimited, but resources are finite". this relentless chase is fueled and exacerbated by the culture of "disposable" and made worse with planned obsolescence,pushing us to replace products faster than ever. We need to find ways to balance this, in order to achieve sustainable progress.
I’ve always wondered if you can design a business plan to encompass the birth, growth, and death of a company with full transparency. It wouldn’t work as a public company, but it seems it should be possible to go after one specific goal and have everyone participating know what the end game is. Some finite wealth at the end of it. You could push whatever idea you want to a limit, then let someone else carry it further in the same way when the OG company dies.
The hedonic treadmill principle isn’t just a personal thing. It passes through the machinery of business to be amplified and expressed in an absolutely massive way. All characteristics of businesses are those of the humans that make them up. It’s in our nature to want more. The author is asking humans to stop being human.
What a trivial blog post.<p>Aside, Apple going into services is incentivizing them making durable devices which are used long-term. Without services Apple may "not be happy" that you use a 9 year old Macbook. But with services they do want a large install base, new devices and old, so they can sell Apple TV and Music and Apps.
This is an incredibly myopic take and unsophisticated take. Comparing to an artisan is in some ways apt, but undercuts the argument. For an artisan the growth target may be the growth of your skills or of your vision. That's growth, and it requires you to keep producing artifacts and to do so you must have some means of funding that production.<p>For any firm larger than perhaps a single person, you have to have some monetary growth in order to continue to exist. Eventually employees leave and new hires demand more money, equipment wares out and new equipment is expensive, your customers may demand more so you must invest in R&D. Unexpected expenses arise. A growing company can cope with change or rising costs.
Arithmetic, Population and Energy - a talk by Al Bartlett:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY</a>
It really feels like a scaling problem than anything else. It big companies go to shit as they do most of the time it's because tackling scale is a extremely difficult problem
The thing is: Growth is the driver for increased efficiency and that is the driver for any kind of progress.<p>Progress does <i>not</i> just happen out of thin air when a bold mind in their ivory tower has a great insight. Progress requires (wo-)manpower. And that power in turn needs to be freed from more mundane tasks.<p>In other words: We, as a society, don't want Apple to become ever bigger and make ever bigger profits. We want them to continue making MacBooks and to need fewer and fewer people to make them. Because we want these people to cure cancer or drive spaceships to the outer system or develop artificial meat.<p>Unfortunately, this simply won't happen if we take out the unsatisfiable desire for more, more, more.
<a href="https://alearningaday.blog/2019/06/04/joseph-heller-and-enough/" rel="nofollow">https://alearningaday.blog/2019/06/04/joseph-heller-and-enou...</a><p>The late novelist Kurt Vonnegut informed his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.<p>Heller responded – “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . enough.”
In a capitalist, competitive market, growth is the signal that a company is successfully adapting. "Grow or die" isn't just a rallying cry, it is a tough lesson learned from decades (centuries!) of running businesses.<p>I agree with the author's sentiment, that such growth has a cancerous end-game, but it's important to understand that this mindset is the result of systemic pressures. It's as inevitable as the Tragedy of the Commons (1833!), but even more complicated to address.<p>Game Theory is an exceptionally useful lens to analyze these systematic behaviors. If a company isn't growing, that means they're not adapting to the market. That leaves the opportunity open for a competitor, who will take over. Then the "ethical" original is dead, and you're left with a "cancerous growth" actor, again.