The Manager's Perspective

A very interesting discussion on Apple's uncertain future, which despite having a bevy of beauties such as these, being responsible for the single most mass phenomenon of the past few years and built upon a culture of innovation that is stunning, looks shaky. I agree! The initial part of the discussion is worth reading for why just innovation is not enough.

The discussion is How Apple could mess up, again.

However, the interesting part for me was also, here.

Seems to me, given your comments, that Apple has another strategic option: to focus on continuing to develop new markets with its proprietary, innovation-heavy approach, harvest them, and move on.

We have a case about this at Harvard [Business School], about when John Sculley was the CEO of Apple in the early 1990s. He actually had remarkably clear vision about where the industry was heading. He had three priorities.

First, he felt the company needed to get its price down to $1,000, from $3,000 or $4,000 at the time. The second thing was to open up the architecture, by selling the OS. And the third was that handheld devices were going to be big. He was right on all three, but the culture of Apple was just so strong that Sculley just couldn't change the direction of the ship.

So I always ask the students, "What would you do if you were on Apple's board?" And they always say the same thing: "Crucify him, and bring in a good manager."

"So who would you bring in?" I ask. And they say: "Bring in someone really strong, who can make those decisions." So what did Apple do? They brought in Michael Spindler -- a strong general manager type who was known for his operations ability. Well, that didn't work out.

So I ask, "What would you do next?" And they say: "Bring in a good manager -- someone who can turn the company around." Well, they brought in Gil Amelio, who had turned around National Semiconductor. But he only lasted 18 months or so.

So then they bring Jobs back. And why did the company prosper under Jobs? The students' instinct is to say, because he's a good manager. I think the reason is that he stopped trying to change the company. He wanted them to do what they had always wanted to do: make cool products, based on proprietary architectures.

posted by Dr. Gonzo  # 9:48 AM