Apple products and its User Experience has become a 'poster' for everyone in the industry. I am a huge fan of it too. However, I could not believe that they did all this by some sheer magic and just by a SINGLE personality like Steve Jobs. I was convinced that they would have their own challenges, which they successfully overcome - reflects in their end products.
I do not believe that life would be a bed of roses for Jonathan Ive and his team of designers. I am certain they would have their internal challenges too. I mean which true 'designer' would enjoy working in a place that did not have challenges to overcome?
'And the award goes to...the supply chain guy' I came across this article and blogpost by accident on the internet and felt, reassured. I could relate to Apple as a 'corporation' more after reading this. It reassured me of my belief that the level of 'innovation' that Apple was able to deliver to its consumers, cannot be possible without a lot of other things working in a certain way. Some of them mentioned in the article:
- simplifying the product portfolio to reduce manufacturing costs and increase profit margins,
- making a product available simultaneously in multiple countries to increase product launch impact
- while reducing marketing costs,
- making a one-size-fits-all cell phone without a physical keyboard to accommodate any current and future keyboard configuration and decrease localization costs,
- using open-source FreeBSD as the core of Apple OS X to provide stability to the OS and focus precious development efforts in a market-differentiating OS experience,
- locating the core of their developers in Cupertino, CA rather than outsourcing development to India to make development tasks more effective and achieve better alignment around user-focused corporate culture,
Clearly:
- its not enough for board members and other members of senior management to start telling people to be 'innovative' when so many things around them are not ENABLING them to do so.
- true innovation can only happen when things are thought through - across organizational silos.
- innovation isnt something restricted to 'individuals.' It is ALWAYS a result of multiple people contributing towards a COMMON/SHARED VISION/GOAL.
- innovation is about entrepreneurial spirit
- innovation is about some BRAVE decisions to solve problems at the root level and turn things around.
- innovation is not restricted just to a bunch of 'designers'
- innovation means 'cleaning things up internally' to be able to better serve the consumers.
- innovation is NOT skin deep
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