Bose CEO Lila Snyder on the fight for high-quality audio

Today, I’m talking with Lila Snyder, who is the CEO of Bose. You certainly know Bose — it’s one of the most famous brands in all of consumer tech. The company started 60 years ago selling speakers to consumers, and its focus on research and development has led it to be a leader in both car audio and noise-canceling headphones. Lila was last on the show about four years ago, and since then she’s dramatically rearchitected the company. The focus on research is still there, but she’s sold off Bose Professional, acquired the high-end audio brands McIntosh Labs and Sonus faber, and, perhaps most importantly, started licensing all that core Bose technology to other companies. Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Head here. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here. That means that while you can still go buy a Bose soundbar or Bose headphones, the company is also turning into a B2B business, and you can get Bose technology in Skullcandy headphones and Epson projectors, among many other products. That big change in the business comes with a big change in structure. Becoming a software company in addition to a product compa…