I read that after the transition to Tim Cook that Apple started hiring many more people with MBA backgrounds. Under Steve Jobs they didn’t have that many MBAs outside of finance. Now, from what I read, they have a lot of them. The article suggested that it might indicate a shift from a creative company to a managed one.
Steve Jobs was a visionary product guy. Tim Cook is a manager. Not to say anything against Cook — there’s nothing wrong with that — but it is a personality difference.
Apple today is where IBM was in 1980, and the result will be the same.
MBA’s crawling out of the woodwork does tend to stifle innovation. Such companies become very good at delivering what they already do, and at delivering what customers are capable of envisioning. But, beyond that, there are no metrics and hence they’re blind to anything else.
MBAs kill businesses, IMO. At least businesses that want to be dynamic and creative.
A beancounter should never be #1 in such a company. You need a good one to be #2, to keep the visionary #1 guy grounded in something vaguely resembling reality. But never as #1.