Welcome to this new blog!

My objective in these pages is to give my comments and explain my take on what makes our world today and how changes could make it different from yesterday.

I also engage anyone to stop and think - and share your comments - about what we take for granted, and see how a single difference can yield positive and negative consequences.

Let’s take for exemple, the nice picture I posted with this first blog entry. A personal computer in 2004? I do have the greatest respect for RAND Corporation (see here and here), but let’s face it:

How could you predict technology in 50 years time? Or even 10 years time? Or even less: let’s say in a few months?

Some people do think they “know”... Well my opinion is that they actually “expect” more than “know”!

The people who really “know” are not scientists, they are not the marketing guys, they are just inspired “consumers/engineer/visionnaires” with a lot of ideas and a strong will (urge) to change and improve a “situation”.

Let’s keep on using the anchor example of the computer industry:

From 1977, Apple and their Apple I and Apple II with their text entry only/TV graphics, created a first revolution by creating and delivering what became the standard in “Personal Computer” then. Most of the competition tried to catch up with color, disquettes, design, etc... With finally a strong contender embodied by 1983 IBM PC.

Then in 1984, when Apple (and specifically Steve Jobs’ team) released the Mac, using a mouse, windows, icons, blah, blah, blah... They simply delivered what we still refer today as a “Personal Computer”, and that is 25 years later!

But what is the most significant is that at the same time the Mac was released, it not only discarded the just released IBM PC but also the Apple IIe, Apple’s current number one selling product...

Why did Apple risked their survival with throwing away their top selling computer?

Did they foresee that their lead on the PC was about to end? Was it driven by a well done SWOT analysis? Or was it just a bold move, a bet on the future?

In my opinion this is actually a mixture of all three, plus an extra ingredient! They knew that their Apple II design was easy to replicate by the competition, but that most of all, they needed to innovate in new ways. They also knew that they couldn’t/wouldn’t take on a direct IBM confrontation.

As soon as the Apple II design was settled, Apple’s R&D teams developed internal competing projects, using two different approaches: “continuous improvement” with the Apple III and a “vision finally botched by technocratic engineers” with the Lisa.

Both of those were just failures, the reason was that they were either “not that different enough” or “just too darn expensive” for the “basic features” they were offering.

So how did they got the Mac right?

That was the extra ingredient: one man’s vision (Jobs’) who disagreed with the management of the Lisa project and finally parted from it, added with a small team of “pirates”, who scavenged the best out of Apple existing hardware, software and enlightened engineers.

This tiny team created a product that had mouse, windows but was monochrome, mono-task and didn’t required a hard drive, hence smaller and cheaper... And that was just right!

They even prepared in advance the birth bed with partners that would release applications (the “ecosystem”) that will set the Mac in the PC history: Microsoft with Word and Excel, later Aldus Pagemaker, etc...

How could you replicate this success story in another company?

Nurturing a “rogue product team” is not something that a lot of companies would dare to do, or would think to do when they invest in continuous improvement programs with market-driven product value analysis leading to the right KPIs and a subsequent Lean 6-sigma product development.

Even at Apple they did not understood the key of their success in time: When Mr. Jobs wanted to do it all over again with the goal to replace the Mac a few years later (remember it was monochrome and mono-task), they ousted him!

Which leads us to the main question of this blog posting:

What is real progress made of?

I am no philosophe - but I’ve learned that progress is made of epistemological ruptures which is what generates the famous paradigm shift resulting in a change of era (coal/iron, electricity, electronics,etc.).

This means that only a bold leap/revolution could/will create a new order (finance, moral, cultural values) through the destruction of the previous one...

It opposes to the concept of “confrontation” by leaping over establishment and beliefs.

So, do companies have to be bold and just bet on any “lunatic” ideas?

Sometimes, just being bold fails, the “right” vision is also needed thorough the engineering/marketing/selling process to succeed: When Apple (without M. Jobs) tried to impose a product that was so much in advance it looked like an UFO (the Newton) but was not quite technically in sync with its time (same issues as the Lisa) it was a failure. But it helped set the base for another one to succeed: Palm Pilot and the PDA industry.

The Palm Pilot was based on proper improvement process as explained before:

It was a great, robust, simple and cheap mobile platform. But soon it was lagging behind its “expectations”.

Also when Palm showcased the Foleo in 2007 as a bold move, it was received with such a media turmoil and awful review (“A smart phone companion? What?”) that it didn’t last long before they shut it down. Would Palm have just waited, positioned it in the netbook market (no “smart phone companion” nonsense), and developed a good and cheap application ecosystem in advance, it could have been a great challenger in that market.

But this - as the rest of the netbook industry - would not have been any “game changer”: It is a mere evolution than a revolution...

And I don’t even talk about OS/2 Warp and Taligent... And more recently Vista...

In all those products, the pitfall was that the people in charge of these “projects” didn’t concentrated from the vision till the delivery on the real product value. Improvement, yes but for what?

Finally let’s go back to Apple’s recent (it’s been 10 years now) revival.

It coincides with the buyout of NeXT Computers (what Apple’s next product would have been if Jobs had stay at Apple) and the return of its CEO, Mr Jobs at the helm of the company: Banking the survival of a company on buying another one was a revolutionary business practice, and I would dare say that Gil Amelio’s move was a revolutionary one, even if it costed his position...

Since then with the success of MacOS X, the child of NEXTSTEP, the hiring of talented people (John Ive amongst others) and the move to the Intel platform, Apple has re-emerged as a strong computer/software maker.

However there was no revolution in there: NEXTSTEP in its time might have been it, if it ever had been released by Apple. But it was already around for about 10 years before it got merged with the legacy Mac technologies.

Some minor “design and engineering” revolution like the unibody fashionable computer (the iMac) featuring no diskette drivers (remember the “Oh! Ah!”), early Wifi adoption, the unibody laptop have paved the way to the current situation.

So where is the revolution?

It is only in retrospect that a real revolution is best witnessed:

Apple’s second take on mobile computing, with the release of the iPhone, has had a greater impact that people foresee and is actually revolutionizing the industry.

We don’t see it in full perspective yet, but “multi touch” and “gestures” is the new “mouse”, “documents/tools” you can actually touch is the new “window”, and, this is a complete change of environment, not just adaptation...

The iPhone is even bigger than just a computing platform, it is an always connected, always on media that sit in anyone’s pocket, thus being able to revolutionize much more than just the IT industry.

So what if the ripple effect of the iPhone was so deep, so large, that the same way the mac outpaced the Apple II and the PC industry back in the 80s, the iPhone and its upcoming companions (read “iPad/iTablet”) will do the same with the PDA, Phones, Mac and the PCs in the late 2000’s?

Did Jobs’ and his “pirate’s team” did it again with the iPhone?

If yes, could any other company get the inspiration to do the same?

If so what is the trick, is it really just the vision of ONE person that can make revolution happen?

My opinion on all those questions is “YES”... (But I will explain that in a further post...)

... In the meantime, what is your opinion?