Four Innovative lessons from Apple

This week (June 7th) Economist's front cover article hails Apple Computer company as one of the most innovative companies worldwide. In it lies four lessons for us to learn from:
1) Apple's innovations is due to its openness to EXTERNAL as well as INTERNAL sources

2) Apple designs its products around the consumer, rather than around the technology

3) It sometimes ignores what the market demands to focus on what it thinks is right.

4) It learns to 'fail wisely', example being the success of the Macintosh due to the demise of the Lisa.

Four simple lessons. The last paragraph of the article is worth quoting in full.

None of these things, of course, guarantees success: you can buy in clever ideas, pursue simplicity, ignore focus groups and fail wisely—and still go bust. Apple very nearly did so itself. No doubt the bumptious Mr Jobs will overreach himself again: the iPhone's success is not guaranteed. But for the moment at least it is hard to think of a large company that better epitomises the art of innovation than Apple.

Looking at the Economist cover, there is also an interesting observation. The background of the picture resembles a Windows computer wallpaper. The lone person standing is dreaming about Apple. Is it a cheeky poke at Microsoft having thoughts about wanting to emulate Apple? I guess the designer is a Mac enthusiast.

ks