innovation at Apple Inc. Corporation

 innovation at Apple Inc. Corporation

Innovation in the current business world is one of the major determinants of whether a company survives in competition or fails. In Guide to Innovation, Stainleigh (2008) describes innovation as ‘’a collaborative process through which organizations abandon old paradigms and make significant advances” (38). The underlying drive of innovation in an organization is the ability to not only formulate ideas but also implemented them in a way that propagates positive implications. Through innovation comes cultural change, which seeks to align the new business developments and products with consumer preferences (Gupta & Prinzinger, 2013). Lack of such an alignment has often lead to potential enterprises running out of business despite being market leaders at some point in time, such as Nokia and Yahoo. This paper assesses innovation at Apple Inc. Corporation, culminating in a discussion of the culture of the organization before and after the shift and an assessment of the level of success that the company realized.

Organization Culture before the Shift

The majority of Apple’s success today is attributed to Steve Jobs, which is why the company, as is known today, might not be in existence. The company was once a disaster while it engaged numerous chief executive officers (CEOs) for short durations of time, reaping bad financial results at each quarter. A case In point is the 1996 attempt by the then CEO, Gil Amelio, to purchase NeXT in a negotiated deal. An exiled Steve Jobs was running neXT, and Gil’s effort was in the hope that Jobs would bring direction. Job propagated a boardroom coup that led to the resignation of Gil. Jobs was motivated by the idea that he could save Apple, by all means, necessary even if it meant seeking help from Microsoft, a competitor company.

In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple and began by identifying all the factors and elements that were contributing to the death of Apple. His role continues to have a significant impact on the Company to date. The deterioration of sales was a severe problem that threatened to eliminate the company, which is why a strategy to entice the fans into purchasing the problem. Nevertheless, the company had to embrace innovation to give consumers a reason to purchase the product. As such, one can argue that the culture of the company was one of apathy before the return of Steve Jobs.

Organization Culture after the Shift

Nine years after the death of Steve Jobs, Apple remains one of the leading company with exponential growth. The company’s rise began by assessing consumer needs, which culminated in a focus on a modern operating system (OS) on which to build the brand. This technology is the one that was tasked with the endeavor of taking the company into the new millennium and beyond. Through this notable innovation, the company would build the Mac that epitomizes the cultural shift. The desire to stay abreast of the OS technological sphere propelled the company to instill a culture of technology philosophy that remains the most critical virtue of the company (Schwartz, 2014). The first tenet of the technology philosophy was to instill the desire to be innovative, which has continually been based on consumer needs, preferences, and orientations. The second tenet entailed ensuring that all the teams and stakeholders in the organization understood that technology in its purest form is worthless, which explains why it has to be tied to function, elegant form, and user-friendliness or ease of use.

The adoption of technology in a way that seemed unlimited changed the culture of the organization into one of belief as far as computing experiences were concerned. Jobs propagated desire to follow early interface designs and integrating them into Mac, such as the Xerox Parc. This technology led to the creation of a graphical user interface that was more popular. This kind of focus on beliefs to innovate and adopt ease of utilization of mantra has guided whatever the company has achieved in software, hardware, and services. On a different note, innovation led Jobs to believe that a company could only succeed if it has a specific way of leadership. He, thus, introduced a program that seeks to ensure that any executive hired by the company has the ”Apple Way” of thinking and operating. This program continues to be a central element in the company’s culture.

Assessment of Success or Failure

The culture that has been instilled in the organization due to the above analyzed technological innovation is successful from a business and change point of view. The company has since been focused on creating a wide range of devices such as the iPad Mini and redesigned versions of the iPhone. Market share has expanded exponentially, leading to the growth of profits and stocks. Two years ago, Apple became the first company ever to reach $1 trillion value of capitalization, with the value maintaining stability and averaging $967.87 billion in September 2019 (Narayan & Ramu, 2018). Customers assert to being intriguing by the innovativeness in the company, while employees confirm to deriving intrinsic motivation from the endeavors of the company to keep everyone on their toes.

Conclusion

The culture at Apple has been propelled by the focus on technology. Both Steve Jobs and Timothy Cook have ensured that the company does not stagnate or become complacent. Based on the customer perspective, stakeholder views, and profitability analysis, the shit at apple Inc. has been successful.