Newsgroup: it.comp.macintosh
Titolo: The Economist: Lessons from Apple

).
But mostly Apple's zest comes from its reputation for inventiveness. In
polls of the world's most innovative firms it consistently ranks first.
From its first computer in 1977 to the mouse-driven Macintosh in 1984,
the iPod music-player in 2001 and now the iPhone, which goes on sale in
America this month, Apple has prospered by keeping just ahead of the
times.
The company, which is shortly to join the S&P 100 index of leading
companies, is not without its critics. The not-always-lovable Mr Jobs is
still stuck in a greedy-looking share-option "backdating" scandal. The
firm has come under attack for refusing to make its operating-system and
music-protection software available to others (a price worth paying,
Apple responds, for greater reliability and consistency). And there are
grumbles about manufacturing defects and customer service.
Apple is hardly alone in the high-tech industry when it comes to duff
gadgets and unhelpful call centres, but in other respects it is highly
unusual. In particular, it inspires an almost religious fervour among
its customers. That is no doubt helped by the fact that its corporate
biography is so closely bound up with the mercurial Mr Jobs, a rare
showman in his industry. Yet for all its flaws and quirks, Apple has at
least four important wider lessons to teach other companies.
Not invented here, and very welcome
The first is that innovation can come from without as well as within.
Apple is widely assumed to be an innovator in the tradition of Thomas
Edison or Bell Laboratories, locking its engineers away to cook up new
ideas and basing products on their moments of inspiration. In fact, its
real skill lies in stitching together its own ideas with technologies
from outside and then wrapping the results in elegant software and
stylish design. The idea for the iPod, for example, was originally
dreamt up by a consultant whom Apple hired to run the project. It was
assembled by combining off-the-shelf parts with in-house ingredients
such as its distinctive, easily used system of controls. And it was
designed to work closely with Apple's iTunes jukebox software, which was
also bought in and then overhauled and improved. Apple is, in short, an
orchestrator and integrator of technologies, unafraid to bring in ideas
from outside but always adding its own twists.
This approach, known as "network innovation", is not limited to
electronics. It has also been embraced by companies such as Procter &
Gamble, BT and several drugs giants, all of which have realised the
power of admitting that not all good ideas start at home. Making network
innovation work involves cultivating contacts with start-ups and
academic researchers, constantly scouting for new ideas and ensuring
that engineers do not fall prey to "not invented here" syndrome, which
always values in-house ideas over those from outside.
Second, Apple illustrates the importance of designing new products
around the needs of the user, not the demands of the technology. Too
many technology firms think that clever innards are enough to sell their
products, resulting in gizmos designed by engineers for engineers. Apple
has consistently combined clever technology with simplicity and ease of
use. The iPod was not the first digital-music player, but it was the
first to make transferring and organising music, and buying it online,
easy enough for almost anyone to have a go. Similarly, the iPhone is not
the first mobile phone to incorporate a music-player, web browser or
e-mail software. But most existing "smartphones" require you to be
pretty smart to use them.
Apple is not alone in its pursuit of simplicity. Philips, a Dutch
electronics giant, is trying a similar approach. Niklas Zennström and
Janus Friis, perhaps the most Jobsian of Europe's geeks, took an
existing but fiddly technology, internet telephony, to a mass audience
by making it simple, with Skype; they hope to do the same for internet
television. But too few technology firms see "ease of use" as an end in
itself.
Stay hungry, stay foolish
Listening to customers is generally a good idea, but it is not the whole
story. For all the talk of "user-centric innovation" and allowing
feedback from customers to dictate new product designs, a third lesson
from Apple is that smart companies should sometimes ignore what the
market says it wants today. The iPod was ridiculed when it was launched
in 2001, but Mr Jobs stuck by his instinct. Nintendo has done something
similar with its popular motion-controlled video-game console, the Wii.
Rather than designing a machine for existing gamers, it gambled that
non-gamers represented an untapped market and devised a machine with far
broader appeal.
The fourth lesson from Apple is to "fail wisely". The Macintosh was born
from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the
iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple's original music phone,
produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both times, Apple learned from
its mistakes and tried again. Its recent computers have been based on
technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that
appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple. The wider lesson
is not to stigmatise failure but to tolerate it and learn from it:
Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its
tougher bankruptcy laws.
None of these things, of course, guarantees success: you can buy in
clever ideas, pursue simplicity, ignore focus groups and fail wisely—and
still go bust. Apple very nearly did so itself. No doubt the bumptious
Mr Jobs will overreach himself again: the iPhone's success is not
guaranteed. But for the moment at least it is hard to think of a large
company that better epitomises the art of innovation than Apple


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