What could "a couple standard deviations better" even mean in the context of evaluating a product?
I would still argue that Apple benefited tremendously from Jobs. How I would hypothesize the benefit came is that a product winds up being a sort-of "single thing", each part coming together to a single experience for the customer. It's a paradoxical situation because a technological device is produced by a series of experts in multiple fields and with so many people involved. In an average company, the unity of the experience tends to be lost in multiple bureaucratic exigencies.
Jobs was able to put together a single (fairly good) vision into a product by having an absolute dictatorship on over the creation process. Hyperbolic "couple of standard deviations" claims aren't necessary. Artistry still is often a matter of one person (or a very small number of people) conceiving a vision. So letting Jobs be the painter drawing with other people talents worked and was better than twenty hands at the paintbrush. But it had the problem that absolute authority can work out to being cultish and abusive. No sure if there's a solution here.
I would still argue that Apple benefited tremendously from Jobs. How I would hypothesize the benefit came is that a product winds up being a sort-of "single thing", each part coming together to a single experience for the customer. It's a paradoxical situation because a technological device is produced by a series of experts in multiple fields and with so many people involved. In an average company, the unity of the experience tends to be lost in multiple bureaucratic exigencies.
Jobs was able to put together a single (fairly good) vision into a product by having an absolute dictatorship on over the creation process. Hyperbolic "couple of standard deviations" claims aren't necessary. Artistry still is often a matter of one person (or a very small number of people) conceiving a vision. So letting Jobs be the painter drawing with other people talents worked and was better than twenty hands at the paintbrush. But it had the problem that absolute authority can work out to being cultish and abusive. No sure if there's a solution here.