What’s the secret behind Apple’s success? Super-cool design perhaps? How about amazing customer loyalty? Sealing the right partnership deals? Or perhaps it’s simply having oodles of cash to put behind its products?
The Internet has been awash with various theories since the company achieved two financial milestones this month. Its stock traded above $500 a share for the first time and the company's market cap exceeded $500 billion … putting it into an elite club of corporations.
If only someone could tap the source of this success – and bottle it. Perhaps they’d call it Apple juice? (Sorry about that.)
Seriously though, analysis of the company’s astounding success has made interesting reading.
One story caught our eye – featuring Apple designer Sir Jonathan Ive (dubbed the ‘iMan’). In an interview with the Evening Standard, he was asked “What makes design different at Apple?”
He pointed to a company culture of innovation and fanatical attention to detail. Sir Jonathan talked about the birth of a new idea being fragile … and then becoming a conversation among the design team … and then being turned into a 3D model when ‘everything changes’
“There’s a sense of being inquisitive and optimistic, and you don’t see those in combination very often,” he explained.
“Most of our competitors are interesting in doing something different, or want to appear new - I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better,” he told the newspaper.
And this is the crux of the matter. The best IT companies have a hunger to be better – and appreciate that the seed of an idea needs time and warmth to germinate. It’s something their employees understand too. And the company gives its people thinking space … real time … to see if a few flashes of inspiration can be turned into something truly market-leading.
It’s a question worth asking any IT partner: “When did you last provide serious amounts of time for your staff to see if they could come up with something good?”
If this is part of their company DNA, then you can expect good things from them down the line … whether you’re thinking about purchase-to-pay solutions or any other IT services.
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