I hope everyone had a good week and is enjoying Christmas parties and celebrations with friends and co-workers. Here are your share-worthy links. Enjoy your brunch!
Seth’s Latest book is Remarkable. It’s beautifully illustrated in color and has the look and feel of a slick, high-gloss, soft-cover magazine from the high-end fashion world. Visually, this book is unlike anything published by Seth Godin:
Mitch asks if Seth believes it’s the most beautiful expression of Seth's emotional labor. Answer: Yep!
The Seth Godin says on the record it’s taken him “120+ essays, 5,700+ blog posts, and 18 books to realize this result.”
He remarks: I can’t believe I waited this long to publish in color
The podcast turns instructive between Mentor (Seth Godin) and Student (Mtich Joel) midway through their conversation. It’s a personal moment between two people sharing a mutually genuine respect and friendship. Hint: Even people like Mitch Joel feel the powerful self-doubt The Resistance imposes. How Seth Godin counsels and reassures Mitch Joel during this segment says it all about Seth’s character and class.
But then I remind myself of one thing: With the 6 Plus—or, for that matter, a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or Nexus 6—I don’t need a tablet anymore. If the 6 Plus can save a bit of money, why not dedicate a fraction of those savings to accessories?
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Hi Social Media ReInvention Community Members! Apologies for not consistently posting our Sunday Brunch Edition. External circumstances prevented me from keeping up. I promise to do better job. I hope you celebrated blessed and happy Thanksgiving Holidays with loved ones and friends.
Here are your share-worthy links. Enjoy your Sunday Brunch!
1) CNET: How-To Video: Upgrade Your RAM on Your MacBook Pro. I upgraded the RAM on my MacBook Pro 15 this week. I suck as a do-it-yourselfer (DIY). I researched required steps and tools to lessen my anxiety and increase my confidence. The Result: I successfully upgraded my MacBook Pro 15 (late 2011) from 4MB to 8 MB of RAM (and she performs like a champ)!
As I type, I’m running seven (7) applications: iTunes, Google Chrome (with 12 tabs open), Apple Preview, MarsEdit, Finder, Evernote, and Dashlane. Here’s the content I found most helpful:
You’ll need a Phillips 00 screwdriver to unscrew the bottom panel. I paid a premium price for the iFixit 54 Bit Driver Kit because the magnetized screwdriver bits are HUGE in removing and reinserting the six (6) tiny screws on the back panel. There’s a reason I went to business school instead of medical school (HINT: I lack a surgeon's dexterity).
2) Fast Company: What Every Young Designer Should Know, From Legendary Apple Designer Susan Kare. Kare has two (2) simple rules for designers: 1) Fake It Tlll You Make It and 2) Design Never Really Changes. I personally relate to Rule #1. When she applied applied for Apple’s graphic designer position, she worked at a furniture store. She prepared for her interview by studying graphic design books from the Palo Alto library (direct article quotes):
Having designed many of the Mac's early system fonts such as Chicago, the (original) San Francisco, Geneva, and Monaco, Kare is one of the pioneers of early digital typography. But when she first applied to Apple, she was pulling her type design qualifications out of thin air. "I was working at a furniture store at the time, and I didn't know the first thing about designing a typeface," she told me. "But I'd studied graphic design, so I said, 'How hard can it be?'" So Kare went to the Palo Alto Library and took out a number of books on typography. "I even brought them to my interview to prove I knew something about type, if anyone asked!" she laughs. "I went into it totally green."
The 52-year-old often describes her job as "connecting the dots"–between GE's seven segments (Power & Water, Oil & Gas, Energy Management, Aviation, Transportation, Healthcare, Home & Business Solutions), its many markets, and between the company and the outside world. It's something Comstock regularly does as head of GE's sales, marketing, and communications, and in her management of the company's multi-billion-dollar Ecomagination and Healthymagination initiatives, dedicated to environmental and health care innovation respectively. In her travels and conversations with customers, she constantly scans for patterns. "When you're in this business, you see a lot of things," Comstock notes. "Marketers are in a great position to notice if something's happening in an industry like energy or healthcare."
Think About that Quote for a Moment. Beth Comstock explained how a great marketer’s expertise is a game changing asset in understanding and exploiting opportunity. Digital and social media marketing continues accepting the rap, “we can’t measure return on investment (ROI)!” Follow her advice and make the case of how not only your digital marketing efforts identify relevant opportunities but also how your expertise uniquely enables you (personally) to identify new business opportunities.
Please let me know if you agree or disagree with my thoughts in the comments. I would love to hear from you. I’m here to read, listen, and learn from YOUR PERSPECTIVE. Comments are open. So let’er rip!
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Fingers Crossed, It Won’t Be the Last. Social Media ReInvention Community Members know of my excitement when LinkedIn Pulse published two other blog posts in the LinkedIn Pulse Social Media Category:
Thank You for Your Continuing Support! I published my first Social Media ReInvention blog post more than five (5) years ago. Time flew by.
Thank you for granting me permission to share with you my love of technology, digital marketing, social media strategy, personal reinvention, and writing.
Here’s a screen shot one of my closest friends sent me from his iPhone. Thank you for taking time to read and support my art:
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Apple’s 21st Century Innovation Model is SICC: Simplicity + Inclusion + ControI + Collaboration
SICC Rhymes with SICK (and means the cool kind, not the feeling ill kind). Charlie Rose published his Tim Cook conversations after Apple’s September 2014 introductions for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6+, Apple Pay, and Apple Watch. Their conversations reveal Cook’s strategic vision for Apple and The Apple Ecosystem. His ecosystem-driven strategy explains the rationale for two (2) major 2014 corporate decisions:
The IBM Strategic Alliance
The Beats Music and Beats Electronics Acquisition
Cook explains these major decisions within the context of these central themes:
Apple is about making great products enriching people’s lives.
Killer products (and experiences) are designed outcomes by integrating Apple’s hardware, software, and services.
Google is Apple’s primary competitor. Their respective battlefields are the Consumer and Corporate Ecosystems.
Steve Jobs’ DNA Runs Deep Through Apple (10:37 – 13:55). Steve Jobs legacy endures at 1 Infinite Loop.His Cupertino office remains untouched. His core values are imprinted throughout Apple product design.
“Unlike other companies, Apple’s objective is not to make larger product portfolios.”
“All of Apple’s major products could fit on this small table.” (in reference to Charlie Rose’s iconic interview set)
“It’s hard to edit. It’s hard to stay focused. The hard part is deciding what NOT to work on.”
Diversity in Thought Fuels Apple Innovation and Design (17:13 – 20:23). Cook’s leadership mission is ensuring Apple senior executives and team members collaborate at an incredible level. That mission begins with recognizing individuals who are historically strong Apple contributors. During this point in the conversation, Cook enthusiasically mentioned five to six senior executives (by first name) making considerable impacts during their Apple tenure — like Angela Ahrendts).
Brad Stone’sSeptember 2014 BloombergBusinessweek article highlights Cook’s moves to include new perspectives at Apple. From January 2014 to September 2014, Apple hired approximately 20 senior executives from multiple industries (direct quotes below):
Betting the Farm on The Apple Ecosystem. Cook’s strategic bet makes collaboration an Apple strategic imperative.Applesenior executives are functional experts who collectively work as a team. Horizontal product development enables integration of hardware, software, and services to produce a killer product. Cook explains (20:08 – 20:23; paraphrasing):
“Respecting, trusting, and complementing one another (in thought and skills) is what makes this all work.”
Collaboration may be a virtue, but Cook insists it’s more of a strategic imperative. Aligning thousands of employees is crucial now that “the lines between hardware, software, and services are blurred or are disappearing,” he says (Cook). “The only way you can pull this off is when everyone is working together well. And not just working together well but almost blending together so that you can’t tell where people are working anymore, because they are so focused on a great experience that they are not taking functional views of things.”
The result is only now becoming apparent with services that work across different Apple devices. Embedded in the iPhone 6 and the new iOS 8 and Mac OS X Yosemite operating system is a feature called Continuity, which lets users start an e-mail or some other task on their Mac, pick it up on their iPhone, and then move it to their iPad or even the Apple Watch.
(Cook continues) “We would never have gotten there in the old model. These new products are reminders of why we exist.
The things we should be doing at Apple are things that others can’t.”
Battle of the Ecosystems: Apple Versus Google — Consumer and Corporate
Google Is Apple’s Top Competitor (32:30 – 36:00). Cook’s answer to Rose’s “Who’s Your Competition?” question speaks volumes. He recognized Google twice during their conversation as Apple’s most formidable competitor.
He dismissed everyone else including Samsung and Amazon. Microsoft never entered the conversation.
“Lenovo has the expertise and track record to scale Motorola Mobility into a major player within the Android ecosystem. This move will enable Google to devote our energy to driving innovation across the Android ecosystem, for the benefit of smartphone users everywhere.”
While acknowledging the China Mobile partnership is a “big deal” for Apple, he said (i.e., Isaacson) Google-Nest exemplifies the “amazingly strong integrated strategy that Google has to connect all of our devices, all of our lives, from our car, to our navigation system, to how our garage doors are going to open.”
Isaacson also pointed out that Nest co-founder and CEO Tony Fadell will be joining Google as part of this deal. “Fadell was one of the team that created the iPod. He was very deep into the Apple culture … when Apple was so innovative.” To play catch-up, Cook has to think about what industry he wants to disrupt next, Isaacson said. “I think Steve Jobs would have wanted as the next disruptive thing to either have wearable-like watches or TV, an easy TV that you can walk into the room and say put on ‘Squawk Box’ … or disrupt the digital camera industry or disrupt textbooks.”
“We ought to see in 2014, Apple do something huge,” Isaacson said.
Does Apple Lag Behind Google? Global Market Share – Yep. Global Market Profitability – #HellNo
Tim Cook Wants the Apple Ecosystem to Command the Enterprise Market (22:26 – 25:37). Steve Jobs transformed our daily consumer lives. Cook wants to reinvent our daily professional lives. That’s the mission objective for uniting with IBM, a former adversary. Cook shared with Rose the following anecdotes (paraphrasing):
“We believe we can change the way people work at an enterprise level.”
“The vision is to fulfill the unmet needs of the industry verticals down to the granular specificity of the job itself.”
“We can change the way people work. We spend so much of our lives working.”
“The iPhone maker has worked closely with a group of startups, including ServiceMax and PlanGrid, that already specialize in selling apps to corporate America. The two people familiar with the plans, but who could not speak publicly about them, say Apple is already in talks with other mobile enterprise developers to bring them into a more formal partnership.”
A Play for The Enterprise Version of The Internet of Things? Sounds like it to me. Now, that would be both transformative and lucrative. Stay tuned. I’m looking forward to learning about the Apple-IBM alliance’s penetration and progress after Q1 2015 (even more than the Apple Watch Launch).
“The creative genius of Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre.”
“Iodine’s deep knowledge of the entertainment vertical (i.e., music industry)”
“Dr. Dre knows artists and is an artist.”
Cook Recognizes Remarkable Human Centered Design (HCD) When He Sees It, Hears It, and Feels It. Cook shared with Rose how “not all subscription services are alike.” His enthusiasm in describing Beats Music after experiencing it himself is palpable (paraphrasing):
“Beats recognized the importance human curation can make in how you feel and experience something.”
The story behind the deal is much more nuanced, however. It’s not just about those tangible assets (referring to Beats’ headphone and streaming music platform), but rather a really big bet on capabilities—especially in product development, marketing, and branding. The fact that Beats has achieved a 59 percent share of the high-end headphone market in the United States and launched a high growth, buzz-worthy streaming service demonstrates the power of HCD principles at work.
Apple is well positioned to accelerate this momentum, given its own commitment to HCD.
Shunning Not-Invented-Here (NIH) Critics: Does It Matter in the Long Run How Apple Sources Innovation?
Cook’s critics point to the Beats acquisition as a leading indicator of Apple’s inevitable demise because it “no longer innovates from within.” Nonsense.
”WE WERE the first company to be selected No. 1 seven years in a row. My plan is that we’ll be the first company to bounce back.”
So says Dr. P. Roy Vagelos, CEO of Merck, no longer America’s most admired corporation. A year of economic turbulence, plus a far more extensive survey of companies, has produced a new crop at the top, with half of America’s ten most admired corporations newcomers to that elite group.
The long-reigning king is deposed, relegated to No. 11.
“Merck’s scientific excellence had long inspired admiration and envy; corporate leaders voted it America’s Most Admired Company in Fortune from 1987 to 1993. By the early part of this decade, however, Merck was finding it difficult to turn its science into new, profitable medicines. In Merck’s case, there was a unique element added to what was an industrywide drought.”
“Merck was so pleased and proud to be Merck that its research culture had become haughty and insular. The company refused to consider medicines discovered outside its own labs and spurned the mergers and research alliances that were reshaping the industry.”
“By late 2004, Kim had overseen a new system that allows scientists to mine scientific literature to identify promising chemical compounds. He also encouraged Merck scientists to use their connections to open doors for Merck’s acquisitions department
“In 1999, Merck entered into just ten collaborative licensing deals; by 2006, there were 53 joint-development transactions and small acquisitions.”
10 years passed before Merck transformed its strategic thinking towards developing and accessing innovation. In three (3) short years, Cook’s decisiveness and focus proves what happened to Merck will not happen under his “Apple Watch” as CEO.
Diversity in Thought (with a Capital D): Innovation Isn’t ONLY From Within Apple Anymore
The Tim Cook Leadership Era Means the “I” in Innovation Means “Inclusion Inspires.” That cultural pillar extends far beyond sexual orientation. He’s driving cultural and strategic shifts at Apple to sustain and grow a core Jobs-Apple value (10:37 – 12:04): “To Be the Best.”
When Your Competitor is “The Most Ambitious CEO in The Universe,” You Better Continue Reinventing and Transforming. Talent isn’t enough. Company culture drives innovation and competitive advantage.
Here are two amazing books on the significant impact of company culture:
Final Thoughts: Blocking Out the Noise and Questioning Conventional Wisdom
Will Tim Cook Continue Being Criticized for Not Being Steve Jobs? Yes. When you succeed an icon and legend, that’s a given. But, Cook won’t blink twice. He described to Rose his skill in “blocking out and filtering the noise.” (20:59 – 22:05)
Tim Cook Bets His Legacy and the Apple Ecosystem on “The Corporate Internet of Things.” That’s a massive pivot for a company whose past successes are rooted in consumer fanaticism. But, Cook has no interest in “following the herd.” Cook described to Rose why he decided to leave Compaq and join Apple in 1998(36:13 – 37:00; paraphrased):
“Well I’m just thinking I’m going to meet him and all of a sudden he’s talking about his strategy and his vision (i.e., Jobs), and what he was doing was going 100 percent into consumer. When everybody else in the industry had decided you couldn’t make any money on consumers so they were headed to services and storage and enterprise. And I thought, I’d always thought that following the herd was not a good thing, that it was a terrible thing to do right? You’re either going to lose big, or lose, but those are the two options.”
“He was doing something totally different.” (referring to Jobs)
Not Following the Herd. Questioning Conventional Wisdom. Being the Best. Sounds a lot like:
Photo Credit: Apple Website on October 5, 2011
Your Turn
Thank you for taking time to stop by. Please let me know if you agree or disagree with my thoughts in the comments. If you disagree, I would love to hear from you. I’m also here to read, listen, and learn from YOUR PERSPECTIVE.