“In the earnings call following Apple’s Q4 2016 financial results, UBS managing director Steven Milunovich asked CEO Tim Cook a rather pointed question: ‘Does Apple has a grand strategy for what it wants to do over next 3-5 years? Or does it react to the market then decide?’” Ben Lovejoy reports for 9to5Mac. “Cook was widely felt to be uncomfortable with the question, and Milunovich has now explained why he asked it, and how well prepared he thinks Apple is for the future.”
“Milunovich told Business Insider that Apple has historically had a clear strategy, but he’s not sure that its current approach is as clear. In particular, he referenced a Harvard Business School term known as ‘jobs theory.’ This refers to jobs that people want to get done rather than Steve Jobs, but he says that Steve was very good at taking this approach,” Lovejoy reports. “Coined by Clay Christensen, the phrase essentially argues that Starbucks might think it’s in the business of selling coffee, but the job many of its customers want it to do is provide a meeting place for friends or a temporary office. Companies need to think not about products, but what jobs customers want to get done.”
[With Apple Watch] they introduced a number of jobs to be done, including some that you alluded to in terms of not needing to pull out the phone just to get notifications. They talked a lot about notifications, sending cards to friends and so forth. And it took a year or two to see there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of demand for that job. Some of the applications turned out to be not early but just wrong in terms of expectations of use. — Steven Milunovich, UBS
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If the Apple Watch, from launch to today, doesn’t starkly illustrate an Apple without Steve Jobs at the helm, nothing does – well, except for the Maps debacle, “Mac Genius” ads, iMacs missing Christmas 2012, rudderless Apple TV, pervasive Mac malaise, Apple Music and iTunes UI disasters, Siri Remote “design,” no new iPads for Christmas, MIA AirPods, etc., etc., etc.
Forget about the Vision Thing™ with Tim Cook, we’re not even seeing the Operations Genius™ thing.
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