The Next Small Thing(s)

Apple CEO Tim Cook (image credit)

NBC News writer and editor Rosa Golijan posted this article on her Google+ profile:  Tim Cook teases 'exciting new product category' and 'more surprises' from Apple in the fall.  It was definitely a lot of teasing, which, depending on your view of that proverbial glass, was either a half-tempting or a half-feeble effort. 

CEO Tim Cook teased... "Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services that we can't wait to introduce in the fall and into 2014. We continue to be very confident in our future product plans..." There will be "really great stuff coming in the fall and across all of 2014." 

When asked about the new product categories, Cook declined to provide a specific timeframe, suggesting a new category may not appear this year. "The reality is that the work we do to produce truly innovative products is very hard...  I assure you that we're working very closely with manufacturing partners to achieve a very exciting roadmap."

I added this to the conversation, in reference to the Market Watch article:  Apple earnings drop; dividend, buyback raised.

Hmm, let's see. Apple stock has been on a steady decline since its 52-week high in September 2012 (705.07) and is just off its 52-week low (385.10) at 406.13 right now. Sentiments suggest that they're playing at .500 ball (in the middle between bearish and bullish), which is positively mediocre. So Cook's teaser, six months before they introduce their new stuff, may be more for investor confidence than for customer excitement.

That was in April, and now we can see that that teasing worked reasonably well for Apple.  At least Cook steadied the decline in investor confidence, which began nearly a year ago, with the stock closing yesterday at 409.22.

(image credit)

Cook strikes me as an intelligent and capable top executive, who must have a realistic bearing on what he can and cannot do, especially in the long shadow cast by Steve Jobs.  His new innovation strategy may not knock our socks off, but it sounds really good.  Jobs made the complicated innovation process seem easy, sleek and flawless, not to mention sweatless.  Cook and other CEOs know otherwise.

Proliferate the portfolio

Whether it's the iPhone or Facebook, The Next Big Thing is simply not an everyday occurrence that can be ordered, as if it were a menu item.  Instead, writer Hadyn Shaughnessy with Forbes described it brilliantly as proliferating the innovation portfolio.

Not one, not two, not three innovations, but more.    

Produce the next small things

I remember a gift that friends gave me.  It was a picture of a rock climber, looking like an insect against a massive wall of a mountain.  The saying was, Yard by yard, life is hard.  Inch by inch, life is a cinch.  I've since rephrased it as Think big, act small, step-by-step.

In a similar vein and in lieu of a category buster, the innovation Zeitgeist among the big boys in technology is to produce a set of The Next Small Things.

Embed innovation widely

While Jobs may have conceived of innovation as a sort of oligarchy in the organization, that is, the purview of a chosen few who assume responsibility and control of it, Cook has apparently embedded it more widely and deeply in the DNA of Apple.

I wonder, then, how well frontline staffers are encouraged to innovate and whether they have fewer barriers to cross, if they want to run an idea by management.

Innovate everyday

For me, these are impressive efforts at innovating on innovation.  Innovation is not the exclusive right of The Gifted or The Visionary.  But to the extent that we, including CEOs, view it essentially as a mindset, and not as a process, platform or product, then we truly rip that proverbial box apart and we stand in front of an open vista for innovating.

Shaughnessy closed with:

The name of the game right now, and we see it in Apple, Google, [and] Amazon[,] is to innovate in multiple ways all the time, to do “innovation every day”. That takes enormous resources and confidence. Apple has it in abundance, and conditions are looking ripe for it to move from the lab to the market. Just like Google six months ago, Apple looks ready to roll.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD