People Wit

Rangkaian Artikel yang saya posting secara berseri ini saya kutip dari Buku The Apple Way : 12 Management Lessons from the World’s Most Innovative Company karya Jeffrey L. Cruikshank. Banyak Point dan pelajaran tentang management yang bisa kita ambil dari Perusahaan paling inovatif di Dunia ini. Mari kita belajar dari Keberhasilan dan Kegagalannya. Selamat Menikmati.

What puts Apple in a class with the other great innovators—legendary organizations like Xerox, Sony, and Bell Labs? There are at least seven lessons that Apple has learned, over time:

■ Share the vision. Make it tangible. Make it visible.
Years after the fact—after Steve Jobs was gone from Apple, and before he came back—R&D people at the company remembered the mockup of a computer that became the PowerBook: the best-selling computer ever, up to that point.

■ People + strategy + dollars = a window on the future.
To innovate successfully, you need the right people, the right strategy, and adequate resources.

■ The future isn’t always welcome, and-without nurturing- it may not stick around.
Some of the best ideas in history have been pooh-poohed by the people who should have been their best friends. Some great products have left a willing market simply through neglect.

■ Being three years ahead of your market-and costing twice as much as your competitors-is a bad formula.
Ask the people who believed (and in some cases, still believe!) in the Newton. Ask the people who hoped that Pippin would beat Sega.

■ Follow through!
With no follow-through, the future can’t work.

■ If you believe in the future, and your future lies in R&D, don’t starve R&D.
To the extent that Apple has succeeded, it is mostly the result of brilliant innovations—plus some good marketing, and some occasional management.

■ Being forced to spend R&D dollars is a bad thing.
And a good thing. Apple’s R&D budget is approximately a tenth of Microsoft’s. Half of Apple’s R&D budget goes to hardware. So, Apple can only spend a twentieth as much as Microsoft on software development, in any given year. But is that hardware money well spent? Well, watch the iPods and Mac minis flying out of the Apple Stores.

Source : The Apple Way. 12 Management Lessons from the World’s Most Innovative Company. Jeffrey L. Cruikshank.McGraw-Hill. 2006