The POINT of the last four posts

The previous four posts, noting the 'significant' enhancements embodied in Apple's new iPhones, illustrate in several ways the theme that I find difficult for many people to appreciate about corporate, as opposed to individual, innovation.  Corporate innovation, for all the reasons we discuss in this blog, struggles -- top managers stifle it, middle managers fear it, developers get frustrated and leave, etc.

And granted, these ideas were all spawned by individuals, most at tiny start-ups, some of which were researched and followed by Apple researchers, enough to get excited to buy the company.

But they couldn't result in a game-changer until a large company built 'the contribution' into a mainstream product.  Take the fingerprint recognition idea.  This has been around 'forever' along with retinal scan.  Microsoft's "Home of the Future" featured retinal scan more than a decade ago at the 'front door' (one small difficulty there, they mounted it high, by the doorbell, so a kid coming home from school would have to buy a pogo stick {know what that is?} to get high enough for the retinal scan to see their eye).

Fingerprints are pretty foolproof, a clever design if there ever was one, and they also are pretty simple--we never forget to carry them around, we cannot misplace them (unlike keys, or iPhones for that matter), they cannot be easily phished... wow, what a natural.  How come it has taken so long might be the right question, instead of snarky comments like, "Wow, BIG DEAL, what a gimmick" as I heard yesterday in too many Silicon Valley contexts.

So, too, the color and image appeal of the iPhone 5C.  Henry Ford stuck with black cars, GM trumped him by putting in a paint spray booth.  He was incensed, but he also was beaten.  GM introduced the annual model update, and color.  Wow, so innovative.  It worked.  It worked well enough for fifty years that they perennially beat Ford, once the largest car company by an order of magnitude.

So will the iPhone 5C work?  Remember the Swatch watch craze?  The purists are all sniffing, humff -- it lets the riff-raff in, meaning 'the kids'    Well, the kids are the market, let's face it.

Guess who made the Apple II and the Mac successful -- it was the kids.  What they learned in the process, especially with the Apple II, was how to be comfortable in a new gagdet age, and incidentally, how to put and keep America ahead in the SW-writing age (never mentioned in Walt Isaacson's book about Steve Jobs, becuase Walt didn't understand this HUGE contribution -- I know, I asked him).

We might ask, why couldn't HP have come up with all of these ideas in order to enter the phone business as CEO Meg addressed a year ago.  She said, "we're looking at how to do this without copying and we're having trouble."  Somehow, Apple was able to do it -- and while the pundits laugh, the changes are stunning in their insight, their potential contribution, and their inclusion.

Thank you, Apple