This is a very common misunderstanding of organizational taste. In the book “Taste: The Right-Brained Organizations in the AI Era,” “taste” is not a narrow personal esthetic; it is not simply about whether the color, font, packaging, or interface looks good. The taste discussed in this book is actually the taste of the organization. It is an organizational-level ability to recognize value: what is worth doing, what is not worth doing; what seems correct but is dangerous; what is not cost-effective in the short term but valuable in the long term.
We know that it was Jobs who introduced the term “taste” into the management context. He was blunt that Microsoft had no taste, but he emphasized, “I’m not talking about the little things, I’m talking about the big things.” It is clear that he was not referring to personal taste, but to the taste of the organization.
If we were to consider only Steve Jobs’ personal dressing style, it would probably be far from the kind of “taste” understood by the luxury goods industry, but taste is indeed a universally recognized label for Apple products. In fact, many product managers often hear someone say: Is this very much like Apple? This is the impression that Apple’s taste has left on everyone. But did you notice that few people would say that this is very much like Jobs’ taste? The key point is that this is not just Jobs’ taste, but something that permeates within Apple, like air, which everyone breathes and is shaped by. This is the true meaning of “organizational taste.”
What is the biggest difference between organizational taste and personal taste? Personal taste is random and fickle; you might like something today, but tomorrow you could be drawn to something else. But organizational taste is stable and repeatable. When a group of people make decisions together, they will go in the same direction. So what Jobs was talking about was actually organizational taste.
According to the “right-brain organization” theory, taste is the “ability to discern beautiful things.” However, when applied to an organization, it is not a rule written in the regulations but an “intuitive consensus” formed by the long-term accumulation of experiences by the organization’s members. More importantly, it In other words, it is not an individual talent, but a team capability that the organization can train and improve.
Therefore, taste has never been just about being “good-looking.” It is the ability to judge what is true, what is good, what is beautiful, and what constitutes long-term value. Design is merely the outer shell of taste that is easiest to see. True taste, in fact, lies in the choices made in products, the rhythm of strategy, the allocation of resources, the selection of talent, and the assessment of the organization. Ultimately, it is a shared mental model among the members of It is the kind of tacit understanding among “us,” a group of people who can collectively identify the value and continuously make choices.