The Apple Company is one of the leading companies that have adopted design thinking successfully. Design thinking is a non-linear process which aims to challenge hypothesis, understand users, and redefine difficulties enabling creation of pioneering solutions to test and sample. Design thinking offers a solution-based tactic to solving glitches.
The Problem the Organization Tried to Solve
When Steve Job, the co-founder of the Apple left the company in 1985, the chaotic era of the company’s product development and strategy began. Other giants like IBM entered PC market and this caused a stiff competition on Apple’s products as the company strived to achieve success in the market. This confused the company on what products to produce and develop( Kao, 2018) . Company shares lowered drastically and had an uncertain future as its approaches resembled those of other companies with the changed regime.
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What Led to its Success or Failure?
Job applied the design thinking strategy when he returned to the company by focusing more on people’s needs and making people love the company’s products. Job also focused on designers considering function and form of the product, and building simple and user friendly products( Prud'homme van Reine, 2017 ). He formed a development strategy that that had execution in excellence, platform strategy, integrated customer involvement, and beautiful products as the key elements.
Excellence in execution involved stopping the licensing program and manufacturing was moved to abroad and launching a new website for direct sales. It also involved scrapping new projects by 70% and unique and great products quest resumed. Customer involvement focused on designer characteristics where designs were based on user desires and needs( Prud'homme van Reine, 2017 ). User testing was more utilized to create a smoother software and, editable dialogue box and cut-paste innovations cropped up. Platform strategy created a platform that could accommodate derivative products development and production. The products were to be highly efficient, have lower costs and simple benefiting the company, its suppliers and also the customers. Manufacturing techniques and new materials paid close attention to creating beautiful products such as the iPods.
Job design was redefined and confident as he dramatically introduced the products in profligate occasions to customers. The company got into retail business as other companies went to places where beautiful products were hosted. This generated the highest revenue in the retail sector.
Lessons Learned From this Company’s Experience
One of the lessons learned from experience of this company is that one has to be innovative and solution oriented as companies can directly move to failure from success for lacking clear innovation strategies and copying others. Design and innovation has a great impact as it can help in building a successful company’s business ( Kao, 2018) . Being adaptive and taking risks are some of the lessons leant from the failure and success of the Apple Company.
References
Kao, R. (2018). Disruptive Leadership: Apple and the Technology of Caring Deeply--Nine Keys to Organizational Excellence and Global Impact . Productivity Press.
Prud'homme van Reine, P. (2017). The culture of design thinking for innovation. Journal of Innovation Management , 5 (2), 56-80.
