Apple -- Survival of the fittest

Macintosh --> Ipods, Iphone, Macbook Air :

Apple, the creator of Ipods, Iphones and Macbooks, is a very good example of fight back. The success story of Apple Inc., an American MNC was not a cake walk.

In early 80's, Macintosh was so famous among PC users. Macintosh had a very good user interface and there were no other computer manufacturers providing PCs with Graphical User Interface. Many people often abuse Microsoft for stealing the idea of GUI and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). The success story took a turn after few years.

People were buying Macintosh and Apple was spending money on the researchers to give creative products to the consumers. But what the researchers lacked was the inputs from the customers and application developers. As a result, Apple became a closed communicator and they were very confident about whatever they were doing. During this process, Apple's researchers even neglected the evolution of WWW and they created products, which didn't meet the customer's expectations.

Inspite of being a great technology company, Apple Inc., lost its glory because they didn't bother about "Customer Demand". There were lot of articles talking about the worst scenario of Apple Inc., in 1996.

Everybody started suggesting (sarcastic) ways to save Apple [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.06/apple_pr.html].

In 1997, Steve Jobs was re-recruited as interim CEO of Apple, everybody said he is not the right person to turn back Apple. Lot of people expected that Apple will die soon [http://www.scripting.com/davenet/1997/07/08/TheSureRoadtoBankruptcy.html]. There were rumors that Steve Jobs want his company NEXT to be number one by killing Apple Inc.,.

Steve Jobs never bothered about the rumors and he was back with a bang. In 1998, with the release of iMac, they had given the customers a totally different experience.

In my view there are three major factors for any company/product's success:

1) Creativity & Technology :- With the use of technology and creativity, companies always create new products which a novice user never think about. Apple did the same thing with the introduction of iMac and OS X. They gave the feeling to the customers that its the ultimate experience they can ever have.

IPod and Iphone are couple of other examples, because there were mp3 players and phones in existence previously, but Apple did them in a different way, the way customer love to use it.

2) Marketing :- Reaching the right people at the right time, will fetch many customers in less time. But Apple's marketing strategy looks totally different. They have customers in almost all the age groups. Anybody who likes to listen music will prefer Ipod to anyother player. Its the reacheability and usability of the product, which made it famous.

3) Timing :- As everybody knew TTM has great impact on the sales and the market share. Even the product could be totally different, but once the company announces the product, then there will be lot of other competitors, who will try to tap the market first.
Apple made it bigtime into MP3 and Video Ipods market before everybody else.

Is Apple a customer focused company :-

The main goal of starting with a brief history of Apple's products, is to show how a company can go into from almost bankruptcy position to Number 1 position.

1) No Company is a charity organization and stockholders want to see profits. Whatever time the R&D department spends in research activities, ultimately the outcome should beat the competitor's product and also should meet customer's expectation. In the best scenario, the company should be providing products/services which the customer never expect.

2) When the company has the latest product with good marketing strategy, then they have the market ready for them.

So the company (here Apple) is customer focused and also it is able to meet the stockholders expectations, infact they beat the expectations on the product quality and usability.

Product development :-

After facing lot of problems with PC manufacturing, Apple stopped developing chips and they started buying them from other vendors. But Apple is very strict about their requirements for those chips, which go into their products.

Personally I have experience in working with the design of Wi-Fi chips, which go into the Apple's Airport Extreme and Apple's Macbook Pro. Apple never compromises in selecting the chip vendors for their chips and most of the time the Software development for those chips happen at Apple.

Bluetooth in Ipod : What I heard about not having bluetooth in the earlier generation Iphone's is because, they couldn't fit in the bluetooth chip, with the battery they were using. Bluetooth in general accounts for lot of power consumption and for IPhone, battery life is of utmost importance. So they didn't want to compromise the basic funcationality of a mobile for getting the extra features.

Problems with the Iphones :-

Even after taking extreme care in selecting the chip vendors, there are always possibilities of malfunctioning of chips because of miscellaneous issues. The best solution would be taking back those Iphones and replace the corresponding chip and sell it as the "refurbished product". That is what Apple doing now.

Coming to the spare parts for the MacbookPro or MacbookAir, whenever a company manufactures a new product in the technology industry, they won't generally have any spares, because they expect absolute success rate. Apple is very confident about their Quality Assurance practices.

Another reason for not having spare parts in the store is, because of offshoring of assembly units. Thats why in most of the cases to assure the best customer support service, Apple replaces the troubled piece with the new one/refurbished one.

Marketing Strategy :-

Apple own all the retail stores and they never compromised with the product. In this situation its very for them to sell the product. Apple allowed people to walk-in to their store and there is a big welcome for the customers or window-shoppers. They have gaming consoles in their stores for children. Always they have lot of samples for display for the customers and they generally don't restrict anybody for using them longtime.

So everybody will get feel for the product and definitely if the product is good, even if it is little expensive than other products, people prefer to buy Apple's products.

The customer service in the store is very well managed. The sales persons in the store don't get any commission for the products they sell and they are very passionate about Apple's products.

This gives the opportunity to the sales person talking to the novice customers too. When one get utmost importance and they get a very good product, he/she will buy that product.

In my opinion, Apple has figured out what customers want and what they are comfortable with. They found out all possible ways to fill up the gaps and harnessed the convergence of Mp3 player, camera and phone. There are many alternatives for Iphone/Ipod are available in the market, but with the established customer relationship, everybody wants to be with Apple.

This story again proves the survival of the fittest.

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Cool burst -- A Famous HBR case study

Main Issue:
Coolburst's growth is stagnant and saturated.

What are the reasons?

-- The most traditional approach of coolburst towards the markets and people. They did not consider the changing taste of people and the upcoming players in that segment.
-- The management likes to experiment, but they want to experiment in their traditional way.
-- The management failed to get the right people at the right time.
-- The mindset of the management has to change, they failed to see all the options that are available to leverage and expand.
-- The company has the feeling that they are the leaders and they took it for granted
-- The management couldn't see the potential in their well established supply chain
-- The new marketing director, failed to be flexible and inspite of being creative, he failed to convince his higher authorities.
-- They are not keen on the marketting strategy and limited themselves to school kids :)
-- The management didn't try to comeout of the loop and look at the company from the third person's perspective. They failed to see the problem, because they were stuck up in the pile.
-- Ideas from the employees and researchers were not taken up very easily.

Most of the times, the researchers, who are very good in creativity might not possess the capabilities to see the potential of their ideas. They should team up with the right people and harness the potential of them to convert their ideas into business plan.

In this case study, the researcher failed to findout the right person to market her idea. Being a marketing director Jenkins failed to convey his ideas in the way they could be accepted by the conservative management.

What might solve the problem ?

I see lot of potential in Coolburst. Its not that the company is not doing bad, its all about the growth being stagnant. This gives an implication that there is an well established market base for coolburst.

Luisa, CEO of Coolburst, has to change her mindset. She has to stop thinking that the company is not doing good or she should stop thinking that there is no other that she can increase the market share. I see Luisa's situation, similar to that of the parent's mindset which was discussed in the book "Seven habits of highly effective people". She has to get rid of it.
She should indulge in the activities, which gets her out of the tension and she can start a different vertical in the company, which is dedicated for Creativity and Innovation. So the dressing codes and the work timings of this team don't have effect on the people in the other teams, because this team is totally independent. Everybody know that they are the creativity team and employees in the other teams won't take ques from that team.

The employees in the company should be given to Stop & Think about what they are working on from so many years. Making employees to indulge in Training sessions, which make them focus on their creativity.
Let the dress code in the company to be formal and if they think thats what is stopping people from being creative, the management can allow the employees to be in casual dresses on certain weekdays (eg: friday casualwear).

Not just the employees, there are always their families, who can help the company in the growth. There are always lot of ideas, which sound really silly in the beginning, but if studied thoroughly they might help the company a lot.
This can be done by Organizing competitions to encourage creative ideas from the employees. There are scenarios where the employees in the lower level, suggested ideas to improve the work flow and they paidout heavily. So these case competitions will allow all the employees to share their ideas.

Coolburst can think about buy startups with very good potential. Coolburst's management should be open minded in evaluating the potential of the startup. Otherwise the buyout will not improve anything.

The management team can be aggressive and they can improve the number of drinks that cater to different people.

Coolburst can make alliances with the major food vendors and try to offer their new products as a part of Lunch/Breakfast package.

These are the ideas which I got into my mind, after going through the case study

Fitness center

"After experiencing a decline in usage by its members, Healthy Heart Fitness Center built an indoor pool. Since usage did not increase significantly, it appears that health club managers should adopt another approach - lowering membership fees rather than increasing expensive new features."

The author is trying to explore different possibilities, because of the failure of attempts to improve the usage of the fitness center by its members. The plans that the health club managers deployed, not only failed in attracting the members, but also left lot of expenses on the club. This is a common problem with many fitness centers, not just Healthy Heart Fitness Center.

The main reason for failing to attract its members is, the fitness center would have failed in fulfilling the expectations of the members. The members, might have some expectations when they join the club, but the fitness center's motto might be something different, which ultimately causes in decline in the usage of the members. For example, one of the health clubs i knew promise weight reduction and they claim that its very easy to loose weight. To make the members to join they play the marketting techniques, but after becoming members, those people has to undergo severe physical activity, which ultimately restrains them from their day-to-day activity. Even this heart foundation's schedule might be straining the members, so they limit their usage.

Another reason, which might be vital is, the trainers in the fitness center might not be treating the members in a friendly manner. Most of the times, the members need to be treated on a case-by-case basis, rather than treating them as a lot. Because, certain kinds of exercises might be nightmare for few people because of their personal issues like joint pains or migrain or anyother difficulty. If this is the case, even the managers get expensive features, only few people will be attracted. The issue need to be analyzed in a friendly manner and to be resolved.

To add to the above reasons, the premises and the location of the health club also important. If it is in a busiest place, where the members won't even get parking place, in that case, it is really problematic. If the club is located far from the city for better ambience and silent atmosphere, it might initially attract the people, but as time goes on, people feel it as a burden to come to that place.

To conclude, the managers of the healthy heart foundation has to talk to their members(take a survey or talk personally) to figure out the major problem, instead of wasting money on providing new features. If they talk to the members and nail down the issue, then the money can be spent in the useful manner, to improve the required facilities, but not for the luxuries.

University vs Private Hospitals

There is a common misconception that university hospitals are better than community or private hospitals. This notion is unfounded however, the university hospitals in our region emply 15% fewer doctors, have a 20% lower success rate in treating patients, make far less profit, and pay their medical staff considerably less than do private hospitals. Furthermore, many doctors at university hospitals typically divide their time among teaching, conducting research and treating patients. From this it seems clear that the quality of care at university hospitals is lower than that at other kinds of hospitals.

The author is trying to explain a common misconception and gave the supporting details to support his argument. The main idea is to argue whether university hospitals are better than private hospitals or vice-versa. There are basically three important reasons which support the author's view of the argument.

The first reason to think that university hospitals are better than private hospitals is, because universities are the places where people get trained in medicine. So, it gives the assumption that, people who teach medicine are far superior and will possess more expertise in the particular field. But according there is lack of faculty in the university hospitals, because of the less pay compensation paid to them. When they are getting pay packages in the private hospitals, they need not stick to the university hospitals teaching a bunch of freshers. In fact, they might have the assumption that, if they are in the private hospital, then they need not divide their time between teaching and research. So that they can have some more time to spend with the things they like.

The second reason to the misconception is the dearth of funds. This will be the main reason for not having expert doctors and well managed facilities. Here the main problem is that the university hospitals were provided with better equipment, but they weren't well maintained. The little funds which they have might not suffice to run those facilities any more and as they couldn't retain the best faculty, the facilities can't be used to their full capacity. This will actually contribute to the lower success rate. In most of the cases, the faculty in few universities might not even know how to use some facilities. The universities will have funds to buy the equipment or the university will get it as donations, but they don't have funds to provide training to the faculty and to maintain the facilities, which makes the facilities absolete.

The third reason is most of the doctors who work in the university hospitals, do have a private practice or established hospitals. In that case, even if the university provide the funds and give sufficient salaries, these people will try to force the patients to get admitted in their private hospitals. There is a rule that, these doctors should not have private practice or medical dispensaries, but this agreement is broken in handful of cases. This is like these doctors will just teach the students and do research, but they treat only in their hospitals, where things might be expensive.  Its also observed that some of the university hospitals will not be hygenic, which might
cause more problems to the patients and their relatives as well.

To sum, there are actually different reasons for the university hospitals not to perform well. These things should be taken care off on a case-by-case basis. But in most of the cases, there won't be proper facilities and expert doctors are not available in the university hospitals, which makes people to go to the private hospitals, which are expensive.

Controversial

Everyone of us would have come across the word "reservations". There are lot of articles talking about whether India require reservations or not. Most of the best articles always try to put it the way that reservations are not required, but they exactly meant that we don't require this kind of reservations system.

The very first time, a normal school going kid get to know about reservations/consessions in the beginning of the academic year. Kids will be asking their parents for the text books and school fees. But there will be a list of children, who need not pay school fee and for them text books will be ready in the school itself. In that tender age itself, the kid will have a feeling that there is a differentiation among them. Most of the people won't know the harshness of the feelings because only 20% of the people only would have faced these situations in Government schools. There won't be anyother facilities apart from what was mentioned earlier in most of the normal government schools ( except navodaya and KV's kindof schools). Does only providing fee concession to part of the students with the ugly title "reservations" and providing books will solve the problem ??? its a definite NO. Isn't it a paradox. Yeah... people will be provided free books and free education, so we expect students to study and flourish... but the number of students passingout from this group will be very less... The obvious reason is people have free books, but nobody to teach... Not only the reserved class... It is really ridiculous to use the word "reservations" in this particulat situation... The basic needs of the student are not satisfied by the government at the entry level. . Inspite of all these things, there are still students joining government schools, just with the hope that they might get to learn something and most of the times they won't get to learn anything. Just because they couldn't pay the fee at the corporate schools, they will be joining the government schools. People are forced to join their kids in private schools at any cost. This defies the main reason of establishing government schools.

In any situation, there is no point in providing the so called "reservations", which are provided as a sop to the people, who can bare the cost of corporate education is totally ridiculous and just waste of public money. Instead of providing the reservations to the students, if they give "reservations" to the government schools, that will solve the problem definitely.