Creativity at Apple

Case synopsis

Creativity at Apple, this case portrays the importance of creativity and innovation in business processes and products. Along with that, this case analyzes the relative importance of creativity in developing new products as well as in management processes and methods.

Case Issues

• What led to the downturn of Apple towards the start of 21st century?
• Why do companies who come up with innovative products fail to capture larger market share?
• How important are creativity and innovation for companies to achieve success?
• Which factor is more important for driving economic growth- product innovation or process innovation?

Case Facts

• Apple has been coined as the leading pioneer in the field of creativity and innovation.
• From 1980- 2003, Apple has consistently brought new technology and products for which Apple Inc. is acknowledged throughout the globe.
• Apple Inc. has lost significant market share to its competitors and holds a mere 2 percent share in the $180 billion PC market worldwide.
• Apple’s ranking in the PC market dropped down to 9th in 2004 and its operating profit also shrunk from 20 percent in 1981 to 0.4 percent in 2004.
• Although Creativity and innovation are coined as the very heart of success, the top innovative companies like Enron, Apple Inc., Xerox Corporation have over the years not made relevant profits.
• Companies like eBay, Dell, Wal-Mart, South west Airlines who have pioneered process innovations are examples of incredibly successful companies and take the top positions in the list of Fortune 500 companies.

Concepts Applicable

As per the study, Apple Inc. has been the leader in developing innovative products since 1980’s but still it has not been able to capitalize on its core competency due to unrest in the management. Apple’s share in the PC market has been going down since the introduction of Apple III and its market share has gone down to a merely 2 percent figure.

Although Jobs, the soul of Apple Inc. focused on developing innovative and user-friendly products, Apple’s products have not been able to impress the customers on large scale.

Among the four approaches to Creativity, Apple has opted for imagination as the employees at Apple are asked to think out of the box and come up with new and innovative products.

Other competitors such as Dell, HP, IBM have focused on Improvement approach to creativity and tend to come up with new processes, methods which enhance their business overall.

Alternative approaches to creativity which Apple may implement are Improvement and Incubation. Incubation approach would help Apple improve on their management issues which would reduce significant amount of costs in the long run and by using Improvement approach Apple can come up with new process and methods of interacting with its customers to increase their market share. This approach will also help Apple Inc to improve the teamwork between their highly talented R&D engineers and their sales/marketing managers.