Big 5 lessons from Apple's success

Eye-popping sales figures... Industry-shaping technological prowess... Mind-numbing financial strength

What a tremendous success it has been! The Apple juggernaut has trounced all pundits' expectations, steam-rolled all competition into pulp, gatecrashed into the 'PC' market with unquantifiable fury, and totally destroyed all existing business models in its industry.

It is a heart-warming story for those who have followed (the late) Steve Jobs' life and times.

It is a detestable nightmare for the likes of HP, Dell, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia and Google.

It is grand fodder for case-studies that are being churned from leading b-schools portals.

But what is it that's made this amazing success possible? Can it be replicated by Apple itself in the future, or by anyone else? How far can Apple really go? Will it end sometime?

Here is my analysis of the Big 5 lessons from Apple's decade of uncontrolled steam-rolling, left-right-and-centre!

1. Mega success is a unique template

Really big successes - where companies trample everyone else and romp home with full glory - are almost always based on unique business models. There is nothing "standardisable" about such models except the underlying features - genuinely unique disruptive models, firm belief in what the company is trying to achieve, and a loyal fan base. So Apple's model of success just cannot get replicated by someone else. Students of management will remind us of the commoditisation phenomenon, rightly. But other than that, corporate history teaches us that such "repeats" by someone else is almost impossible. Just check out the stories of Microsoft, GE, WalMart, McDonalds, Dell, and Google to get a feel. In each of these cases, no one could repeat their business models with similar success rates.

2. Mega success won't get repeated

Even if Apple wants to repeat the same success story from scratch, chances are it won't be able to. The customers would have changed by then, their tastes would have evolved, the whole set of external conditions will have become novel and different. So the same products just won't work at all. Hence the same model is ruled out. (Yes, they may try new products, but Apple is so much defined by its unique products (of today) that a new set of products will almost mean a new business model).

(if you feel that 2 is the same as 1 above, please read again)

3. New Star is always in the offing

"All empires collapse eventually". The good news is no single player will dominate any segment forever. That is nature's check against monopoly and destructive domination. It is certain that a new player is sitting somewhere is some garage chiselling a bullet with "Apple" written on it. And the bullet will be fired for sure. Those who find it difficult to digest will do well to remember the disdain with which rumours of RIM's fall or HP's inability to face Apple's iPad onslaught were received just a few years ago. In 2007, it was considered heresy to even suggest that some company could dare challenge HP's PC-laptop monopoly. In 2004, it was inconceivable that the multi-models business strategy of Nokia could ever go wrong. 

So it will be with Apple. The fact that technology moves forward with great pace, and with no fidelity towards any particular shade of capital, is a sobering reminder that the bullet may appear from anywhere! Apple may not "die down"... its multi-billion dollar horde of cash stashed in banks can turn it into a safe financier of dreams for generations to come. But that won't be the Apple we know, and respect.

4. "Future predictions" are the best bullshit conceivable

The painful thing about human life is that predictions are impossible to make with certainty. In a sense, this is what makes life so interesting - what would we do if we knew our date of departure? But in business, leaders are always desperate to take a peek into the crystal ball and latch on to any shred of news/analysis that can throw light on the future with some certainty. However, one lesson we can learn from the past 20 years of corporate-watching - "Take every pundit's predictions with a bag-full of salt. Most likely, she is going to be proven totally wrong by the future." For any CEO, saying anything with certainty should be perhaps restricted to a couple of quarters, or at the most a full year. Not more!

No one - NO ONE - can predict the future. That's how the wonderfully woven strands of uncertainty define our space-time. That's why God always smiles in his heaven. Because He(She) knows for sure that the interplay of globalisation, technology and mankind's ambitions make a potent unpredictable mixture.

5. Personality cults are still the best bet - they will remain so

Salaam, o sailor!

Companies make products for human beings. Even petfood is purchased by humans, and not dogs. And humans always will remain emotional beings. So it is logical to assume that humans will always be impressed by role models who are worth emulating. Steve Jobs was definitely the most maverick role model - his Stanford speech proved it. It is a grand mistake to assume that companies and products cannot do well if personality cults are used to promote them. It is an equally grand mistake to assume that companies can forever keep using personality cults to sell with the same vigour - people are mortal, period. (either by age, or by talent)

So what's the best way? Well, a matter of choice. Apple chose Steve's cult to base its entire appeal on (they may not say so, but ask any fanboi and you will know!)

Business is so interesting ... just see it from the human lens. It's amazing!

~

The sands of time

I wrote this two years ago. It's rather special, and today is the right time to share it once again with all of you!

- - - - - - 

It was a call from my elder brother, a doctor himself, that alerted me to the possibility. It was a second call 10 minutes later that jolted me into action. I rushed to the hospital. And found my father on the ICU bed. He was no more.

On 31st of March 2002, I was on a routine visit to the Indore centre of Professional Tutorials. It was a Sunday, but an audit was overdue, and I was conducting it alongwith the entire team at the centre. Around 12:45pm, my mobile phone rang. Deep into the audit, it took me some rings before I took the call. "Come to the hospital, Dad is not well", said my brother from the other side. "Sure, I will", I said and continued with the audit, hoping to finish it in another 30 minutes. In just 10 minutes, the phone rang again and my brother, slightly more impatient this time round, said "Come NOW."

I rushed out of the office knowing fully well what that tone of voice could mean. And my worst fears were proven true when I entered the ICU of the hospital. My father was on the bed, and a doctor was desperately trying to arouse him from his sleep, pushing a big needle into his heart, with some medicine that's supposed to act as a life-safer in cardiac arrests. I realised that the time has come for me to realise what he had told me earlier on more than one occasions -"A day will come when you will have to realise that we all travel alone, and it is our duty to give happiness to as many as we can in this journey. We must give back to society much more than we take from it."

These were precisely the words I used while designing the obituary advt in next day's newspapers. I hope it gave him happiness that I remembered.

Indian GDP's explosive imbalance

Let truth prevail

It makes for an impressive headline across India's newspapers each year - "Services sector leads sectoral growth once again; clocks double-digit growth, pushes GDP above 7%".
The latest Economic Survey of India (2011-12) presented in March 2012 pegs the share of Services in India's GDP at a staggering 59%. Agriculture and Industry both account for the rest.

Such a figure not only makes a great headline, but creates a great comfort zone for our politicians. They love it. It gives them something to showcase, and hide the systemic faults. It creates a strong illusion that the entire economy is moving forward at a good pace. An illusion that somehow the great discomfort that stems from poor contributions from both the agriculture and industry sectors can be padded using the impressive growth figures of the services sector. And to top it, taxing this sector gives easy recourse to funds.

But the truth is far from this.

The truth is : Among the three, the Services sector - by its very nature - is the poorest employer of people. And when such a sector starts dominating the GDP with the wild swagger that we see today, it's the most visible sign that a stage of imbalance has already been reached.

The risk of such an imbalance is clear : Large employment disparity, leading to social chaos. 

Trained manpower is in abundant shortage

India is a huge country, with present population nearing 120 crores (1.2 billion) people. Services sector at present does not employ more than 10-15% of the population. A huge 75% plus of India's working population works in its most unproductive sectors - agriculture and industry.


We cannot ever hope that the service sector will become the biggest employer, or a mass-rapid employer, because it needs "skilled" manpower, and those skills take time to develop; and it has been proven through many studies that the Indian mainstream education system has shamefully failed in staying apace with what corporates want today. Even the National Skills Development Mission cannot hope to remedy the situation because by the time its efforts will start paying off in a big way (if they ever), the imbalance will have tilted the ship over.

Why reading is no longer a popular sport

How do I start?

Talk to any young person and you realise that the one habit that has taken the maximum hit due to other temptations of the modern world is "reading".


It seems that the young have simply either given up reading, or have restricted themselves to the narrow niches of their professional needs. Broad, generalist readers are a diminishing community. If things go the way they are, it's a matter of time before a fitting RIP is written for this tribe.


Why is this happening? Some reasons I think are important -

1. False illusion due to social media : Since a lot of youngsters spend a lot of time doing social media networking, there is a false sense of having done a lot of "reading" directly or indirectly through social media itself! Nothing could be far from the truth. The superficial, cursory and utterly peremptory scanning of the written content on Facebook or Twitter can hardly qualify as genuine reading. Still, many feel so.
   

Getting started on Social Media? Five tips for you!

If you are one of the thousands who are just about to start their journey on the Social Media highway, and are eyeing a serious payoff from your efforts online, here are five powerful and direct tips to help you make your journey truly rewarding!

Let's fish!

Social Media is an extremely powerful, useful and evolving monster. It is huge, defies limiting definitions, and can cut both ways. If mastered properly from the beginning, then it may be extremely rewarding in the mid to long term. If done without a consistent thought, then efforts are likely to result more in frustration. And since the ocean of social media is teeming with all kinds of resplendent fish, it's important to learn some basics of fishing!

Here goes!

First Power Tip:  IT TAKES TIME
If you have just started building your serious presence on online platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogger, YouTube etc., then remember the first golden rule - it takes significant time to develop rich, deep profiles that will interest a steady stream of followers. It just does not happen overnight. In that sense, social media property development resembles body building. It grows with time only. So do not be too impatient and even if you are, do not be frustrated with results too soon. Wait, and keep fertilising and irrigating your properties regularly. Incrementally, you will see growth. So, for example, your number of Facebook friends may grow much faster than the number of LinkedIn connections. That's how it generally is. So relax and let it happen.