Saturday, August 27, 2011

Challenging the obvious!

Web is abuzz with with diverse perspectives as news of Steve Jobs resigning CEO of apple was announced a couple of days back. This is no wonder given the current state of economy as well as much debated dependence of apple on Steve Jobs as a person.

IT industry has seen emergence of many geeks, entrepreneurs, innovators, etc but Steve Jobs has demonstrated a multi-dimensional personality, rolling apparently diverse roles  of visionary, entrepreneur, innovator, business man, marketer, etc into one.... Thomas Edison of our generation!

He emerged from out of the blue introduced Macintosh  in 1980s. This disruptive vision brought power of computing to desktop, effectively ending an era of computing dominated by mainframes and 'dumb' terminals and forcing giants of the times like deep blue to realign themselves to the new wave; due credit, of course, to deep blue for having survived the onslaught which killed many. Yet again, when everyone thought that world of computing, networking and communication is converging into a kind of equilibrium, new set of gadgets unleashed by the innovator par excellence disrupted the market place once again, setting established players on the run

The big question now is, what shall Apple be, with Steve Jobs exiting as CEO.  Well, He has resigned from role of CEO but it is expected that he would continue inspire and guide Apple. Yet it is time now for Apple to realign to like life ahead, without its charismatic leader.... and latest development ought to be good when looked at from that perspective!

My hypothesis on organization is that every organization is a living being, like every one of us with its of identity, lifecycle, character, values, intellect and ecosystem. Early stages of its life is guided by its founders just as a toddler depends on his/her parents. Over a period of time, child will and must learn to emerge out of shadow of his/her parents to establish itself in the larger world; it is a gradual distancing that helps to establish distinctive existence with formation of clear identity, character etc. These may be influenced, or inspired, by parents and world around but yet distinct. Distancing can be catastrophic at a stage as early as toddler but mandatory at teen

So I would expect that Apple would live through this natural phase in its evolution and continue to enrich our of world of technology