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Apple After Jobs
recoiledsnake writes "The connection between Apple and Steve Jobs is unlike any other brand and CEO relationship in corporate America, maybe the world. While Bill Gates has successfully transitioned himself away from his day job at Microsoft, can Apple do without Jobs at all? Once word started circulating that Jobs may be ill, Apple stock took a considerable hit, dropping more than $10 a share. And when Mr. Jobs was absent from last week's quarterly earnings conference call, the questions started again — and the stock fell again. What does this mean for corporate users of Apple for whom switching costs are high? Can Apple continue innovating in Job's absence?"
I would contend that Jobs isn't the source of innovation at Apple (yes, he is _a_ source, but not _the_ source, imho) so, yes, Apple can still be innovative without him. Jobs is, however, the source of confidence. He ensures that investors are confident in the choices Apple makes which allows them to proceed the way an innovative company needs to - the engineers are given the room to innovate the way they need and want to. The company is allowed to develop products at the right pace and in the right way and investors remain confident that they are doing "the right thing." Would that same confidence exist in his absence? Would investors be as willing to allow Apple to proceed the way it currently does? That's a more accurate question. In my opinion, at least.
Jobs' vision for the company, and the computer industry as a whole is what sets Apple apart from other technology companies. I'm sure Jobs can be replaced, but what happens if the wrong person takes over his job and wants to turn the company into another Microsoft?
Thinking Jobs does everything at Apple would be silly, but Jobs does enable those who work at Apple to do the kind of work they do. If, for example, Steve Balmer took over the reigns, it wouldn't be long before Apple was putting all their efforts into web searching.
Lets face it, under Scully Apple was within a hairsbreath of becoming another Windows beige box shop. Computer industry CEOs all seem to want to be Dell, except for Jobs who knows that there is a better way. For another example, look at what happened to SGI when they got a "seasoned" CEO. Sadly, in that case the CEO left the dagger in their back when he left and they've never recovered.
I read the internet for the articles.
I disagree. If there is one company that is its leader it's Apple. Of course Jobs doesn't personally do the engineering, but what he does is get people to work long hours for normal pay to be part of something that they feel is bigger than themselves. He also inspires tons of people to buy products for the simple reason they are cool. I obviously don't know him personally, but from the stories I've read he has an exacting, perfectionist personality that he uses to drive all of these engineers and thus the products.
Someone coming in after Jobs will be more concerned with not becoming "the guy that killed Apple" than in creating innovative products. Jobs plays to win. His successor will play to not lose and that will hurt Apple.
And the casual investor will get scalped. Don't be a casual investor. Be a trader, or find a less risky long position. News moves markets but only so far, and most casual traders play news totally bass ackwards anyway.
Also, you said it... "facts will be blown out of proportion and influence investors"
That's called an "opportunity" where I come from. The market is very information efficient. If it's blown out of proportion, it will be blown back into proportion.
From what I've read, Jobs has a pretty decent plan in place to arrange the right successor when that time comes. As I'm sure most of us know or can determine, Apple uses their software (practically as a loss leader) to sell hardware, whereas Microsoft primarily leverages other people's hardware sales to sell its own software. Regardless of your thoughts about either approach, you need to remember that they're completely different and almost completely incompatible with each other. Microsoft's goal, as (primarily) a software company is to make it as easy as possible to get it on each and every piece of hardware in existence, and all things considered they do a pretty good job with it. As Apple makes nearly all of their money on hardware, their competitive advantage is Mac OS X, so it's obviously in their best interest to keep it limited to their own hardware.
Point being that the two business models are so fundamentally different that there would have to be a screw-up of monumental proportions in order for Jobs' successor to try using Microsoft's business model with Apple. Ballmer would obviously be a terrible choice, but that has just as much to do with Apple employees sitting on bouncy balls and rainbows instead of chairs as Ballmer's complete inability to strategically run a company.
Of course, if by "turn the company into another Microsoft" you mean creating a monstrously profitable giant - well, isn't that the goal of every corporation out there?
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I'm all "power to the engineers" but let's say this another way.
You can work for a company that micromanages your time to 5 minute intervals. You will help coworker A debug his system for 2 hours. You will then work on a cross-team initiative to replace the corporate tools with duct tape and sandpaper. Then you will innovate for exactly 1 hour, on the subject of how to make product U enclosure shinier without adding cost. Etc. In this environment you're just turning the corporate crank, any creativity you may have had will be replaced with cheap corporate synthetic. You're doing what your CEO thinks he needs to succeed. You may have this idea for a cool smart phone, but it doesn't help your CEO meet his OPEX goals, or it doesn't give a 5% Y/Y increase in business unit Q's gross margin, or whatever. You present your idea, people give you weird looks like "WTF is that", maybe ask "How much money will this make?" and you don't know, because no one has built it before, so it sounds like risk and we don't like risk. Marketing doesn't help you, because they spend all their time doing the same thing you do, and the idea is lost.
Or you can work for a company that insists you develop a product. They don't know what product, figure it out. You, your teammates or that really clever guy in the basement says "Hey, we can make a really awesome phone, all we need is a major cellular telco, and a few million dollars". The idea flows upstream, someone sees the vision and potential, the idea gains momentum and voila you're funded. You do your design thing, probably get some user interface stuff wrong, probably miss some polish. You get a proto, the CEO works out a deal with otherwise impossible to approach cellular telco's and they agree to support the project. Managers sit in your lap to get you to behave for a few months to a year doing disciplined design and engineering, but out comes a nice product.
So yes, the CEO and the middle management he chooses, matters a whole lot, even if you believe your company has a lot of smart engineers.
The average joe blow's experience with HP is, "Those guys that make cheap computers and laptops?" or, "Those %!@#ing ink cartridges cost an arm and a leg."
Not, "Wow, what fantastic load testing and server software suites they have!"
Which lets Apple make $1.411.764 per employee, while HP made only $336.569.
What a depressingly stupid machine.