Which brings us to Apple. When Jobs returned in 1997 the company was, according to Jobs, “90 days from being insolvent". Sales were dismal. The story goes that Steve was asked by a friend which computer she should buy. Steve was stumped. Despite hundreds of products, there was no clear answer.

In fact, Apple’s range architecture was as messy in 1997 as General Motors’ was in 2008. The company had been making multiple versions of products to satisfy requests from retailers, including twelve versions of the Macintosh computer.