Apple Inc.: Innovation, Strategy, and Customer Needs Analysis

This report examines the organizational creativity and innovation strategies of Apple Inc., focusing on how the company has achieved its leading position in the technology market. The analysis begins with an introduction to Apple's history, highlighting the impact of Steve Jobs and the company's focus on innovation. The report explores Apple's approach to understanding customer needs, emphasizing their design-first philosophy and how they develop products based on user experience. It further investigates the interplay between innovation and strategy, demonstrating how Apple's vision and leadership have fostered a culture of creativity. The report also delves into the role of Apple's employees in generating innovative products, the influence of Steve Jobs on the organization, and his views on process versus innovation. Ultimately, the report concludes that Apple's success stems from its commitment to innovation, visionary leadership, and customer-centric strategies.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
ORGANIZATIONAL CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
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1ORGANIZATIONAL CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
Introduction
Apple Inc. created by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak is presently the world’s largest
technological company in terms of popularity, demand, good will and innovation. The company
had humble beginnings when the founders started it in a garage and it grew leaps and bound over
the years and now presently dominates the tech market. The main factor that has led Apple Inc
into such unbelievable growth is innovation of its products and services. It has provided the
people with things that other companies in the market could not. The company has received
several accolades and awards in t6he field of innovation. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is succeeded by
Tim Cook who is continuing the trend.
Discussion
What makes Apple the most valued company in the world by market capitalization and
how does innovation and strategy work together at Apple?
One of the product features that have allowed Apple to capture a huge part of the market
is its easy and simple operations of its gadgets. One of the most important person behind the
desgn of the MAC OS X operating system Cordell Ratzlaff recounts “We did the design first.
We focused on what we thought people would need and want and how they would interact with
their computer. We made sure we got that right and then we went on to figure out how to achieve
it technically. In a lot of cases when we came up with a design that we knew really worked for
people we did not know how we are going to build it. We had a design target and we worked
with engineering to reach it. We ended up doing a lot of things we initially thought were
impossible or would take a long time to do so.” (Thomke and Feinberg 2012) Therefore, from
the words of him it is understood that instead of making a design and then campaigning it among

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people, they were actually first understanding the need of the mass and then building the product
according to that. Apple is a company that is constantly evolving and has managed to maintain
the evolution in all situations. When Jobs rejoined the company the company was on the verge of
becoming bankrupt from where Jobs recovered the company by dropping very high ambitious
projects and then giving all his focus to iMac in 1998. The product was gigantically successful
and brought the company back to business, this was a master strategy. In this way innovation and
strategy has worked together in Apple.
Identify the innovation approach Apple has successfully used to identify customers’ needs,
and how did it help them to continue to stay ahead of the competition?
As found in the previous section the main strategy that has been applied by Apple Inc. in
order to connect with the audience is to understand the need of the customers and then going on
to build the product unlike other companies who first build their products and then take it to the
market to explain its benefits to the customers. Apple has done that in the opposite way.
In addition, in the history of Apple innovation and strategy has worked hand in hand
since the time of the founder of Apple Steve Jobs (Amit and Zott 2012). The Apple Mac was not
intended to be just a computing device, it actually aimed at “how people could and should work
with a computing device”. That was the vision of the founder which propelled the product so
high that the rest of the story became a history.
Steve Jobs puts very bluntly “The system is there is no system. That does not mean we
don’t have a process. Apple is a disciplined company and we have great process. But that is not
what it is about. Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people meeting
up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea or because they realized

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something that shoots holes in how we have been thinking about a problem.” This visionary and
revolutionary idea of running the company and innovating has kept Apple way ahead of its
competitors.
What role did Apple’s people have, in the company constantly coming up with innovative
products, and how did the culture at Apple encourage/discourage them?
The people related to Apple were very much energized by the visionary and enthusiastic
approach of the leader Steve Jobs (Cusumano 2010). The programmer behind the Apple
Operating System or the person who packs Apple products at the company all are trained and
inspired by the philosophy of the company. Cordell Ratzlaff states that “It was great because we
were applying a lot of creativity and ingenuity on the design side and then pushing the engineers
to use the same kind of creativity and innovation to make that happen”. It is well understandable
from the above statement that the creativity at the top level of the company was spread across the
organization through acculturation and training (Apple.com 2018). The products designed by
Apple were aimed at making them highly interactive and user friendly and that was not only the
case for the products but also the case of the services that Apple provided (Jun and Sung Park
2013). Even small details like the packaging and graphics on the packages had inputs from Steve
Jobs and he himself interacted with the employees at a personal level. Paul Mercer, who played
important role in making iPod’s “user interface” says “The iPod is very simple minded. It really
does not do much other than let you navigate your music.” The people at Apple carried the
philosophy of the founding members and help make the company realize the dreams of Steve
Jobs.
4) What impact did Steve Jobs have on Apple and what did he bring, personally, to the
organization? What was Steve Jobs view of process and innovation?

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Steve Jobs himself played one of the most important role in building the company from
the very beginning. However, by internal politics he was removed from his position and had a
comeback after a period of time when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy (Gallo and
Mangan 2011). By establishing principles of simplicity, ease of use, interactivity of the users,
Jobs propelled the company into new heights and established it as a leader of technological
companies in the world. Jobs did not see process as more important than the people. He himself
was quoted as saying that “Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people
meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea or because
they realized something that shoots holes in how we have been thinking about a problem”. Jobs
made a perfect mixture of strategy and innovation which set Apple apart from the other
companies.
Conclusion
The absence of Steve Jobs has affected the technological world like never before. Many
experts opine that the innovative quotient of Apple has gone down as well. However, by the
visionary innovations devised by him the company still continues to be the leader in its genre.
Apple products have loyal users from around the globe and people stand in ques in front of the
stores from a night before they arrive at the stores. Therefore, it can be concluded that innovation
and creativity has propelled Apple Inc. into great success.

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Reference:
Amit, R. and Zott, C., 2012. Creating value through business model innovation. MIT Sloan
Management Review, 53(3), p.41.
Apple.com., 2018. Apple Leadership. [online] Apple. Available at:
https://www.apple.com/leadership/ [Accessed 29 Mar. 2018].
Cusumano, M.A., 2010. Staying power: Six enduring principles for managing strategy and
innovation in an uncertain world (lessons from Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Google, Toyota and
more). Oxford University Press.
Gallo, C. and Mangan, S., 2011. The innovation secrets of Steve Jobs. Bolinda Audio.
Jun, S. and Sung Park, S., 2013. Examining technological innovation of Apple using patent
analysis. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 113(6), pp.890-907.
Thomke, S.H. and Feinberg, B., 2012. Design thinking and innovation at Apple. Harvard
Business School Publishing.