Somehow, I wound up with a subscription to Business 2.0 magazine several years ago; I’ve kept the subscription going because it usually offers more thoughtful articles than the typical “Great Men — and Carly Fiorina — of Business” drivel one usually finds in such CEO-lebrity glossies as Fortune, Forbes, and Inc.
Biz2 always seemed a little smarter than that: it was the place I first encountered the terrific information graphics produced by Xplane — I think it was a pretty successful symbiotic relationship for the two companies. But then, after a lot of financial troubles, Business 2.0 was purchased by Time Warner/AOL, the publisher of Inc., and Fortune…
So, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was more than a little disappointed to read this month’s cover hagiography of Intuit‘s Steve Bennett, entitled, “The Hottest CEO in Tech“. The author spends most of his 3400 words describing how Bennett has made Intuit a much more successful company than it had been. That success is measured in increased profitability, market segmentation, cost-cutting, and — of course — the blessing of Wall Street. All valid indicators of success, but far from the only indicators.
