Design, Thinking and Innovation at Apple

1. Executive Summary Apple as one of the most famous and successful corporations and brands in the world can attribute its past success to Steve Jobs and their employees. The whole organisation understands the companies (mainly Steve Jobs) vision and philosophy. In Apple, employees think that they can change the world and bring completely new values to the customers by design and innovation. They not only want to deliver these new values in a simple way, but also want to provide the customers with functionalities and features they need and that are competitive. Apple is capable of applying simplicity to the design and innovation of their products and at the same time considering customers' needs. While living this vision and philosophy, Apple does things different as compared to its competitors. Apple is going its own way and sets own industry standards and norms. Apple does not want to be an imitator but rather an innovator, with products and services that mean something special to their customers. The above described vision and philosophy is applied across the whole Apple organisation and all employees understand what Apple wants to stand for. Apple employees are dedicated and take on and fulfill their responsibilities accordingly. The question on hand is; Can Apple keep up its good performance and reputation after Steve Jobs' dead in 2011?

2. Introduction In the following sections, I will highlight some issues and threads that Apple will be facing with its innovation capabilities going forward. After exploring the issues and threads, I will explain how Apple currently handles these issues and suggest some recommendations going forward. In the

recommendations section I briefly reflect on what would change in my organisation if Apple management would step in. 3. Analysis of the issues If one would ask whether there are limitations to Apple's innovation capabilities in future, I would say yes there are. I would like to mention following challenges and threads to Apples innovation capabilities: a. The recent growth and success of Apple can probably still be attributed to Steve Jobs. Can this role be satisfied by someone else than Steve Jobs in the long run? In abstinence of Steve Jobs during 1985 - 1997 different strategies were followed with success that is not worth mentioning. The reason were strategies different to Steve Jobs thinking and vision. When Steve jobs came back in 1997 he stopped the initiatives started, stopped running projects that did not make sense and applied his vision of "Think Different" and "Simplicity" again - with success. b. By constantly going different ways and designing and marketing different products and services than its competitors, there is the thread that Apple could be missing out on markets, trends and opportunities. For example, Apple is not following the open source movement and continues to develop its own software and hardware. c. In the long run, management and employees might not be able to maintain the companies' vision philosophy of providing state of the art products and services that are different to what is already available in the market. By loosing this vision and philosophy and not applying it to its design thinking, Apple might face the risk of developing and marketing products that become less and less attractive to customers. d. One of Apples main philosophy is to keep products and services as simple as possible. The design and engineering aspirations must not end in a stupid product by just eliminating functionalities or processes and in the end will not add any value to the customer. Close attention need to be paid to the customers need when designing and engineering simple products or services. 4. Analysis of the options

Apple currently replies to the noticed issues and threads in section 3 of this assignment with following tools, techniques, approaches and ways of thinking. a. Apple is very strong when it comes to employee commitment. Employees are dedicated to great products and services. They are able to understand customer needs and to put these needs into future oriented products and services. The whole organisation lives a clear development strategy and execution. Trial and error is part of the design and innovation culture and process - failures are considered rather positive than negative. Everyone pays attention to and is worrying about the details, even the packaging is thoughtfully designed. b. Apple has a clear vision, philosophy and value proposition. Apple products are simple and provide just as many or even more functions and features as the products of competitors. Very early, Apple has recognised that computer products need to be more than just supporting and complex tools - they need to be simple and provide the desired functions in order to be attractive to the main population. Apple management (mainly Steve Jobs in the past) ensures that the whole organisation understands what it means by "products need to be simple so that everyone could use it". The thought of "simplicity" is applied across the entire organisation - from the design, engineering, production to the sales department. c. Apple is able to create completely new products and services and to set own norms and standards. By doing so, Apple creates in consumers bolder expectations for the brand and high receptivity to their equally startling successors. Apple for example came up with his own operating system ("iOS"), application store ("App Store") or music library ("iTunes"). These products or services show that whole industries are following and are more or less dependent of Apple now. You can only achieve this by applying new ways of thinking and by going different ways than competitors. d. Apple understands from the customers and the market what role, identity and meaning a new product should become before starting the design and innovation process. There is very close interaction with the customer (e.g. experience, testing) before and throughout the design and development process. After having explored this in detail, products are designed and

engineered and become different versions, with different functionalities and colors. The Lombardy firms' R&D operation seems to have a similar design thinking as per following article in the Harvard Business Review: "The members of the community are prized as much for their immersion in a discourse as for their originality. In other words, long before any thought is given to the form an item will eventually take, its role, identity, and meaning have been thoroughly explored."2 The general look, the product feeling and the product handling seem always to stay the same. 2 "Innovating Through Design " by Roberto Verganti, Harvard Business Review, December 2006 e. Apple finds a good balance between designing and developing of completely new products or services and keeping eyes on their core products, which are required to generate revenue and be profitable. Doing so, they are going to be continuously find new and innovative thoughtful products and at the same time do not put the whole organisation at risk by strategically heading into the wrong direction. 5. Recommendations After having explored the issues and threads that Apple might face and the options Apple might want to considers, I would like to mention following recommendations. a. I recommend Apple to closely monitor the development of its corporate culture and further establish an environment that enables employees to live Apples vision and philosophy. Steve Jobs has been the main character in the past, and current management needs to take on the responsibility and carry out proper action in order to keep and even further develop the corporate culture of "Think Different". A culture that enables to recognise the big picture (holistic approach) and develops a sense for future opportunities. b. While living and applying its vision of designing different products and services, Apple should also pay attention to its competitors and the market as a whole. Of course, to go different ways is going to present enormous opportunities to Apple. However, at the same time it is wise to pay close

attention to what competitors and the market do, in order to get ideas and thoughts for the next extraordinary and successful product or service. Overall and as described above, I think Apple has a systematic innovation process, which was mainly shaped by the founder Steve Jobs. In my opinion, the general systematic of Steve Jobs vision and thinking can be applied to other organisations to a certain extent, depending on the industry.