Adafruit: From Ultimate Driving Machine to Ultimate Rent-Seeking Machine: The BMW Logo Screw Patent.
If you haven’t already heard, BMW’s R&D teams have been busy “innovating.” Unfortunately, they aren’t focusing on the things that actually matter—like stellar engine performance or the legendary driving dynamics that gearheads love. Instead, the C-suite execs decided that the best use of their engineering budget was to design a proprietary security screw specifically intended to prevent BMW drivers from fixing their own cars.
I tie it all into how a public company’s board has a fiduciary responsability to the shareholders legally. Which means they can (and often do) get sued for doing whats best for the customer over the shareholders. It sometimes clicks with people.
And many who don’t see it aren’t dumb per se. They are more or less refusing to see it because they would have to realize that they are the slaves or pawns, or cogs in the machine. And they are not in control of thier destiny. Thats a hard thing for a lot of people to swalllow. Especially since there isn’t much they can do about it.
You would think it should be in the company (and its shareholders) interests to make a product that people really want to buy, instead of becoming increasingly hostile to their customers.
You would, but making such a product is extremely expensive. And consumers will in general buy the cheaper not better product. Major investors know this, so spending on making a better product would actualy cause the stock price to go down. Maybe it would have paid off in the long run. But they want the stock price to go up now, not a year from now.
That’s the core of the issue. Short term focus at the axpense of the long term sustainability of the entire enterprise.