COMPANY STRATEGY:AS THE high-tech industry mourns the death of Steve Jobs, Apple's executives will face the challenge of how to keep its streak of hit products going while avoiding the problems that have befallen other companies that lost their beloved founders.
The risk is this: how to follow the lessons Jobs imparted to his fellow Apple executives over the last 14 years without being trapped by his legacy and unable to adapt to future changes.
Tim Cook, Jobs’s longtime lieutenant at Apple, captured the difficult balancing act in an e-mail to employees in August after taking over as chief executive. “I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change,” Cook wrote.
On one level, the message was an effort to reassure nervous staff members that the commitment to innovation Jobs established would not change. But management experts say change is often exactly what companies need as market conditions shift in the years after their founders are gone.
Walt Disney is one cautionary tale. In the years after the death in 1966 of the entertainment company’s founder, executives strived to stay true to Walt Disney’s spirit. For years, Disney’s old office was preserved like an untouched museum.
But by the late 1970s, Disney was struggling. It took the hiring of Michael Eisner and other executives in the 1980s to revitalise the studio through more aggressive investments in animated filmmaking, theme parks and stores.
“Apple can’t fall into that,” said David Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “It’s not, ‘What would Steve have done?’ That’s a recipe for problems.”
Mr Yoffie said Mr Cook had to “walk a fine line” in how he managed the transition into the post-Jobs era. “For most of the people at Apple, they have to have a sense that the creativity and enthusiasm of Steve will continue,” he said. “He’s got to send a signal to troops. Otherwise he risks losing talent,” said Mr Yoffie.
For the moment, Jobs has left Apple with so much momentum in the market, with surging sales of products like the iPad and iPhone, that it is unlikely to face any huge immediate challenges.
Rick Devine, an executive recruiter, said the “market winds are at their back”, and that Mr Cook is the best-qualified person to continue that success. “He knows that organisation,” he said. “If there’s anyone who can keep that course, it’s him.”
Mr Devine is familiar with Mr Cook because he was the recruiter who introduced him to Jobs in 1998, when he was looking for a seasoned executive to help him clean up Apple’s disorganised manufacturing operations.
Jobs’s death left tech executives and Apple fans struggling to imagine an industry without one of its founding fathers.
Vansi Gadey (30) a designer who works at a big tech firm, was visiting the Apple store in San Francisco to charge his phone. He said: “I’m from India. In my childhood Gandhi was an inspiration. After that, it’s been Steve Jobs.” – (New York Times service)
