Insights For Success

Strategy, Innovation, Leadership and Security

Apple

Management versus Leadership

Apple, Behavior, Management, Organization, StrategyEdward Kiledjian

As people read the new authorized Steve Jobs biography, they are realizing that although he was one of the greatest thinkers of our time, he seemed to lack “management skills”. This brought up an interesting management debate about which is more important for the success of a company: management or leadership.

What is Management?

Management is the art and science of controlling people, processes and technology to deliver maximum value through the prism of corporate values and beliefs.

What is Leadership?

Leadership is the gift of vision and direction. A true leader can think outside of the proverbial box and drive the business towards a completely new and yet undiscovered direction.

Leadership without Management

In an organization with a strong leader and weak management, the vision and direction are there. The company knows exactly where the leader wants to take them, however execution is usually sloppy which may even lead to the inability to exploit an otherwise fantastic new opportunity.

Management without Leadership

In this scenario, the company will lack vision and will exploit its existing position. The company may be a lean and mean operating machine but will eventually shrivel and die because their market will become smaller and smaller.

Leadership and Management

When a company has both, they are unstoppable and Apple is a prime example. Its fearless leadership duo was lead by Steve Jobs and Jon Ive. Two incredibly talented visionaries: one created new markets and the other one ensured the products had high desirability though impeccable design.

On the other end was the management mastermind Tim Cook. Many have said Tim is the supply chain genius that crafted their unique vendor management strategy that gives Apple unique access to brand new technology for 12-18 months.

This is a great time to take a step back and evaluate your own company. Who is leading your company? Does it have a little of both?

 

Forrester says companies should support Apple Computers

Apple, Forrester, Microsoft, Strategy, Windows, technologyEdward Kiledjian

When we thing of Apple computers, we usually think graphic arts departments  or young hipsters but what would you say if a major research organization endorsed it as a productivity tool? Could it be? Has that day come. Oh yes my friends it has… Forrester Research calls Apple users within corporations “Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives”.  They claim that this 17% of the corporate population is the one that pushes the most innovation.

For non subscribers, the report costs $500 but you can read the most important snippets on this blog. 

Mac users forced to use PCs now feel a “slowdown” making them less productive. Particularly the ones accustomed to working with SSD equipped Apple devices. A 2008 report from Forrester said "Unless your market is a niche business group, Windows is the only desktop you need support."

Good shows iPad's dominating the enterprise environment

Amazon, Android, Apple, Good Technologies, IOS, Tablet, WP7, iPad, iPhoneEdward Kiledjian

A recent activation report by Good Techbologies showed that the iPad and iPad 2 continue to dominate the tablet in the enterprise market (96% of all activations on Q3 2011 compared to just 4% for Andoird). On the handset front, the iphone commanded 28%. The most popular Android phone was the Evo 4G at 1.6%.

“This quarter, we saw Android smartphones gain in percentage of total activations,” Good Technology senior vice president of corporate strategy John Herrema said. “This is likely due to the consumers holding back purchases of new iPhones in anticipation of Apple’s latest release (the iPhone 4S) — as our reports indiciate, consumers are setting the agenda for enterprise mobility.” IPhone 4 activations fell from 32.4% during the second quarter to 28.3% during the third quarter as a result of that anticipation.

Important Note: Good's numbers do not include Blackberry or Win Phone 7 devices (since RIM uses BES).

You can download the full report here.

 

 

Apple's SIRI comes from a 10 year military research project

Apple, IOS, Internet, iPhone, technologyEdward Kiledjian

When talking about Apple’s new iPhone 4s, most users immediately think about the Apple Siri Assitant and the new 8 megapixel camera. Siri is a cool feature but did you know it comes from a DARPA military project called COLO?

The lineage

Although we only heard about Siri a couple of years ago (as a stand-alone iphone app), it is actually research that started 10 years ago in a DARPA funded project called Personalized Assistant that Learns.  DARPA awarded the contract to a company called SRI, who dubbed their internal project Cognitive Agent that Learns and Organizes (CALO).

The purpose of CALO was to develop a cognitive system (Adaptive Artificial Intelligence) that could learn from experience, reason, and adapt to ever changing realities. To be clear, CALO learns what information you want, how you want it and what you do with it. With each interaction, it becomes better at meeting your requirements. ”The goal of the project is to create cognitive software systems,” SRI explained, “that is, systems that can reason, learn from experience, be told what to do, explain what they are doing, reflect on their experience, and respond robustly to surprise.”

The switch to civilian use

In 2008 DARPA gave up on the project and SRI decided to commercialize it via a spin-off called SIRI. Seeing the huge potential, Apple scooped it up for an undisclosed amount and the rest is history.

Changing our interface

Siri is different than most competitive solutions because it can understand and respond to natural speech [not just canned command syntax]. Years ago, Apple revolutionized the PC world with its mouse based graphical interface, now it has the opportunity to change our interaction with Siri. Siri may be the first major step towards voice interactive devices that are intelligent.

What do you think?