Joe: What if the best way to grow your business isn't to control your customers, but to let them run wild? Lewis: Okay, that sounds like a recipe for immediate bankruptcy. What are you talking about? Joe: And what if your most vicious critic online, the person publicly tearing your company to shreds, is actually your most valuable asset? Lewis: Now you're just being provocative. That sounds like corporate suicide. Why would anyone embrace that? Joe: It does sound completely upside-down, but it might just be the secret to winning in the 21st century. It’s the central thesis of a book that, even years after its publication, feels incredibly relevant: What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. Lewis: Jeff Jarvis. I know that name. Wasn't he a traditional media guy? Joe: Exactly. And that's what makes his perspective so powerful. This isn't some Silicon Valley kid who grew up with code. Jarvis was the creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly. He was an old-media titan who saw the digital tidal wave coming and, instead of running from it, decided to figure out the new rules of the game. Lewis: So he’s a translator, in a way. From the old world to the new. Joe: Precisely. The book essentially asks every industry—from car manufacturing to government—to look in the mirror and ask that one, transformative question. And the first, most shocking answer is all about giving up control.

Joe: Jarvis starts with what he calls his First Law, and it’s a simple but profound one: "Give the people control, and we will use it. Don’t, and you will lose us." Lewis: Hold on, that sounds great on a motivational poster, but what does it actually mean for a business? 'Give people control'? That sounds terrifying for a CEO. How do you manage that without descending into complete chaos? Joe: It is terrifying, and that's the point. It requires a fundamental shift in thinking. And the best way to understand it is through a story that Jarvis himself was at the center of. It's a legendary tale in the tech world, often called "Dell Hell." Lewis: Dell Hell? I'm intrigued. This sounds dramatic. Joe: Oh, it was. Back in 2005, Jarvis, the author, bought a brand-new, top-of-the-line Dell laptop. He even paid extra for the premium, at-home service. But the machine was a lemon from day one. It was riddled with problems. So he called customer service. Lewis: Let me guess. He was put on hold for an eternity, transferred a dozen times, and got nowhere. Joe: You know the script. Endless hold music, unhelpful agents, and a machine that came back from repair with even more problems. After weeks of this, he was at his wit's end. But unlike most people in 2005, he had a platform. He had a blog called Buzzmachine. And he wrote a post. The title was simple, direct, and brutal: "Dell Sucks." Lewis: Ouch. That’s direct. Joe: He laid out the whole saga in excruciating detail. And then, something happened that Dell was completely unprepared for. The floodgates opened. The comment section exploded with hundreds of other people sharing their own Dell horror stories. It turned out Jarvis wasn't just one angry customer; he was the spark that ignited a bonfire of collective frustration. Lewis: Wow. So it became a rallying point. Joe: A massive one. The story got picked up by major outlets like BusinessWeek. The phrase "Dell Hell" went viral. And you could see the impact in real-time. Dell's customer satisfaction ratings plummeted, and so did its stock price. This one blog post, this one act of a customer seizing control of the narrative, was costing them millions. Lewis: That's incredible. One person's bad experience snowballed into a genuine corporate crisis. So what did Dell do? Did they send him a threatening legal letter? Joe: Their first instinct was to ignore it. They treated it like a PR problem to be managed, not a business problem to be solved. But the storm just kept growing. Finally, they realized they couldn't fight this new force. They had to join it. So, they started listening. Lewis: What did that look like? Joe: It was a total reversal. They dispatched tech support staff to reach out directly to the bloggers who were complaining. They started their own company blog, Direct2Dell, to engage in the conversation directly. And most radically, Michael Dell himself launched a website called IdeaStorm. It was a platform where customers could post, vote on, and discuss ideas for how to improve Dell. They were literally asking their customers to tell them what to do. Lewis: They crowdsourced their R&D and customer service strategy. Joe: Exactly! And Michael Dell later said something that perfectly captures the lesson here. He said, "These conversations are going to occur whether you like it or not. OK? Well, do you want to be part of that, or not?" Dell finally chose to be a part of it. They invested $150 million in fixing their support centers based on the feedback. Lewis: And it worked? Joe: It worked. Their reputation recovered. They went from being the poster child for terrible customer service to a model for how to engage with the public online. And it all comes back to that core idea. Lewis: Ah, I think I see it now. 'Your worst customer is your best friend.' It’s not just a nice phrase. That angry blogger, that furious commenter—they're giving you a free, brutally honest roadmap for how to fix your company. Joe: That's the paradigm shift. You stop seeing criticism as an attack and start seeing it as invaluable data. You cede control of the conversation, and in return, you gain trust, loyalty, and a direct line to what your market actually wants.

Lewis: Okay, so embracing that new relationship with customers is the first step. But it feels like just changing your attitude isn't enough if your business is still built like a 20th-century fortress. Joe: You've hit on the second major pillar of Jarvis's argument. Once you change your relationship with people, you have to change the very architecture of your business. It's not enough to just listen; you have to build things differently. You have to stop thinking like a fortress and start thinking like a network. Lewis: A network? What's the real difference? Isn't every company technically a network of suppliers and customers? Joe: It's a different kind of network. The old model, think of a company like AOL in the 90s, was a 'walled garden.' They wanted to own everything. They wanted you to use their email, their news, their chat, and never leave their little digital kingdom. They were a destination. Lewis: Right, a closed system. Joe: The Google model is the opposite. It’s a launchpad. Jarvis boils it down to another rule: "Do what you do best and link to the rest." Don't try to own everything. Be the best at one thing, and then connect to everyone else who is the best at their thing. The perfect example of this is Google Maps. Lewis: Oh, I love Google Maps. But I always just thought of it as a really good product. How is it a platform? Joe: Well, when Google first launched Maps, they could have kept it as a closed, proprietary product, just a destination you go to for directions. That would be the old way of thinking. But they did something radical. They released its API—the Application Programming Interface. Lewis: Which in simple terms means…? Joe: It means they gave the keys to their mapping engine to the public. They essentially said, "Here are the tools to our amazing map. Go build whatever you want with it." And a programmer named Paul Rademacher did just that. He took the Google Maps API and mashed it up with housing data from Craigslist. Suddenly, you could see all the available apartments in a neighborhood laid out on a map. It was revolutionary. Lewis: I remember that! It was a game-changer for apartment hunting. So what did Google do? Did they sue him for using their data? Joe: That's what a traditional company might have done. But Google did the opposite. They hired him. They saw what he did not as theft, but as a brilliant innovation they hadn't even thought of. And that one act opened the floodgates. Suddenly, thousands of new services and businesses were being built on top of Google Maps. Crime statistics were mapped, restaurant reviews were mapped, hiking trails were mapped. Lewis: So it's like Google didn't just build a beautiful, finished house. They built an incredible foundation and a toolkit, and then invited everyone to build their own houses on top of it, making the whole neighborhood more valuable. Joe: That is the perfect analogy. And that's the essence of being a platform. You enable value creation for others, instead of just providing a finished product. Google benefits because all this activity makes their map the indispensable standard, and it drives more traffic and data back to them. The developers benefit because they get to build a business on a world-class infrastructure without having to create it from scratch. Lewis: And the user benefits because we get all these amazing new tools. It's a win-win-win. Joe: Precisely! And you see this pattern everywhere in the Google-verse. YouTube isn't just a video site; it's a platform that allows its videos to be embedded everywhere, distributing itself across the entire web. AdSense isn't just an ad system; it's a platform that allows millions of small blogs to become businesses. The core idea is to think distributed. Go to the people, wherever they are, instead of arrogantly demanding they come to you.

Joe: So you see the pattern here. Whether it's your relationship with customers or the very product you build, the 'Google Way' that Jarvis describes is about letting go. Let go of control over the conversation, and you gain trust and invaluable feedback. Let go of control over your product, and you gain an entire ecosystem of innovation. Lewis: It's a powerful and optimistic vision. But you know, the book did get some pushback for being a bit too idealistic. Critics have pointed out that while Jarvis praises openness, Google itself is famously secretive about its most important asset—its core search algorithm. Is this idea of 'total openness' a bit of a fantasy? Joe: That's a very fair point, and Jarvis does acknowledge that tension. I don't think the lesson is about being 100% transparent about every single trade secret. That's not realistic. The key is the strategic shift in your default mindset. The old default was 'closed until forced open.' The new default is 'open unless there's a very good reason to be closed.' Lewis: So it's more about the direction you're facing. Joe: Exactly. It's about seeing openness not primarily as a risk, but as the most powerful engine for growth, innovation, and resilience in a connected world. The real takeaway from the book isn't to literally be Google. For most, that's impossible. It's to ask, what would Google do? It’s a prompt to challenge your own deepest assumptions about control, about value, and about what it even means to be a business today. Lewis: It really makes you wonder, in our own work or even our personal lives, where are we building walls when we should be building bridges? Joe: A question for all of us to think about. It’s about recognizing that the most valuable things—trust, innovation, community—can't be controlled. They can only be enabled. Lewis: And that's a lesson that goes far beyond business. Thanks, Joe. This was fascinating. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.