How Apple Got Ahead
March 28, 2008 by Alex
Filed under Uncategorized
Even in its early years, Apple Inc avoided the corporate culture of revered firms like IBM and GE. Yet, this deviation allowed the Cupertino, CA-based company to show unparalleled progress compared to competitors and cause both executives and academics to reconsider formal guidelines in management (see yesterday’s post about Motorola).
Wired Magazine’s feature story for the month examines “Jobs & Co” and the CEO’s behavior in the company. They also list how Apple breaks business conventions and succeeds.
How Apple Defies 5 Core Business Principles:
- Don’t communicate with the press: Never leak product news until release
- Don’t play nice: Use hardball tactics to get ahead
- Forget about customers: Design products that YOU would want to use, not your customers
- Motivate employees through fear: Threaten them, withhold praise, and bring them to tears
- Lock customers into your product: People are willing to trade freedom for a great device.
These tactics completely clash with a post I made last week where Knowledge@Wharton showed how companies could increase profits by playing fair.
wewarner on Sun, 6th Apr 2008 9:32 am
Well, some of this is counter-intuitive to most of us. Not prematurely leaking to the press, play hard and lock customers into yoru product make obvious sense. But not listening to customers and intimidating your employees grates against the core of what most of us believe.
Designing products that make sense to you seems fine, but I have a hard time believing that they don’t get feedback from future users. Jobs is a tough dude, but many people really like him, no matter how much in fear they are.
Heck, you got to give them a lot of room in this. Who would have thunk that someone could reinvent the cell phone. They are truly innovative people.
Bill Warner