Apple under Steve Jobs had strengths such as vision, innovation and uncompromising. Can they be obtained?
Great personalities leave large gaps. Apple had ever close the gap filled by then Steve Jobs' genius and driving force. That was in 1985, as Jobs was pushed by then-CEO John Sculley left the company just a year after the launch of the first Macintosh. From the same John Sculley, the jobs themselves two years earlier by Pepsi had lured away with the words: "Do you want the rest of your life selling sugared water or change the world with me?"
The former is leaving Apple does not get well. Under the leadership of Sculley and his successors to Apple is a profit-driven, marketing-driven, artificially cool and very "normal" company has become, with similar products for sale. Twelve years later, she was nearly broke and had to go through the return of the "interim CEO" (iCEO) Steve Jobs will be saved. Without Jobs, Apple had lost the three properties that had once been so strong: its vision, its capacity for innovation and its unwillingness to compromise. Apple is now threatening the same fate?
Vision
Steve Jobs' vision of the founding of Apple was to build a computer that is "normal" people instead of computer experts available. This has not changed in the last 35 years - at least for jobs themselves - changed as much as anything. Moreover, he has managed to make this vision a reality again and again. All Apple innovations of the last decade - the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad - still have the same theme: the potential of technology to harness in a way that does not need repair manuals and instructions.
In the years after Jobs' departure this first vision was lost. Although Sculley was happy as a visionary, but his strengths were in marketing. Innovations such as Newton, the first PDA, were not developed with the necessary consequences. Yet this was Jobs' philosophy is not good enough then anchored in the company. His departure was abrupt, and he was just 30 years old. His focus was not in it to cast his vision into a business philosophy and work processes.
Just what he has but after his return in 1997 made up first, inward and outward. "Think Different" advertising slogan was Apple's first after returning, and thus not only Apple and its products had its own character again, it was so well laid the foundation for Apple's new identity. Meanwhile, the company sends to institutionalize this philosophy in order for the post Steve Jobs to be present.
Innovation
One of the biggest mistakes of John Sculley, that he criminally neglected product development and the weight put on too much marketing and profitability was had. The product strategy was dictated by marketing, much to the frustration of developers. Many capable people who have contributed technical innovations to leave the company at that time and sought their fortunes elsewhere. The Newton ran into a dead end for the long-overdue successor to Mac OS 9 there was no solid plan.
This also has to be Steve Jobs' return radically changed, and Apple is now regarded as the innovator par excellence. The fact that Apple's product range is very small, should not obscure what is happening under the hood. To make the products to what it now stands, Apple had to develop many of the components themselves - from the processor to the display up to the battery. The sheer number of patents submitted by Apple every month speaks volumes. All that is now so firmly in Apple's secret of success and corporate culture embedded that it's been a lot of time and stupidity would need to destroy this engine.
Intransigence
Apple's stubbornness is bordering on autism. It reflects an essential feature of Steve Jobs again 'character and is also the property that is most difficult to embed into a successful business strategy and also poses the greatest dangers for the company.
Jobs accepted equal partnerships as little as constraints that are dictated by the market. When a market leader like Intel does not manufacture processors that meet the requirements of Apple products, is a replacement of the suppliers no longer taboo. A licensing iOS Apple could bring more market power in the range of smartphones, but that would make Apple may depend on vendors like Samsung or HTC. Steve Jobs just inconceivable how Apple's shareholders pay a dividend. The carbon prefers to stay in Apple's war chest, for the good of the company.
New Ways
Apple's success has not hurt anything. Only a CEO, if he's not Steve Jobs say, just subject to these constraints. A "normal" CEO must make its shareholders very - few realize his personal goals in life. John Sculley 1983-1993 has traded under the laws of the market and set entirely in the interests of its shareholders to focus on marketing and profitability. He has made 25 percent more expensive hardware, MacOS licensed to other hardware manufacturers, even sold his patents at that time unique graphical user interface to Microsoft, could be realized with the help of Microsoft Windows 3. Apple's all this failed as a company.
After 1997, Apple is grown in the realization of Steve Jobs' personal life goals and the Apple shareholders have benefited by the increase in value their shares in it. In order to exactly the same recipe to remain successful, Apple would need no less than a second Steve Jobs. The "New" must find its own path to jobs' to preserve legacy. (Mo)
