Ideas... are Just Ideas

By Kevin Meyer

So the year is 2002.  A team of designers and engineers shows their executives "a phone with a color touch screen set above a single button. The device was shown locating a restaurant, playing a racing game and ordering lipstick."  It was based off of another idea worked on a few years earlier - a "secretly developed alluring product: a tablet computer with a wireless connection and touch screen."

Apple is amazing, right?  Yes, but this was Nokia, seven years before Apple launched the iPhone.

"Oh my God," [Nokia Chief Designer] Mr. Frank Nuovo says as he clicks through his old slides. "We had it completely nailed."

I may have given Apple considerable grief over the last few weeks with regard to their supposed manufacturing and supply chain prowess, but I will give the company kudos here.  The company has incredible focus and they execute.

And Nokia? 

Consumers never saw either device. The gadgets were casualties of a corporate culture that lavished funds on research but squandered opportunities to bring the innovations it produced to market.  Nokia is losing ground despite spending $40 billion on research and development over the past decade—nearly four times what Apple spent in the same period. And Nokia clearly saw where the industry it dominated was heading. But its research effort was fragmented by internal rivalries and disconnected from the operations that actually brought phones to market.

Whereas RIM lacked the right product, Nokia actually developed the sorts of devices that consumers are gobbling up today. It just didn't bring them to market.

Well ideas alone do have a little inherent value.

Instead of producing hit devices or software, the binge of spending has left the company with at least two abandoned operating systems and a pile of patents that analysts now say are worth around $6 billion, the bulk of the value of the entire company.

So Nokia has about $6 billion, and Apple is sitting on $100 billion actually in the bank plus an incoming tide of high margin sales.

Right there, my friends, is the value of focus and execution. 

Nokia had great ideas, great design, and even solid lean manufacturing initiatives. But they also had - and perhaps still have - a culture that focused efforts and funding on the front end of the product realization process and often changed direction on the back end.

Apple had Steve Jobs, who for all his tyrannical faults set a direction, made quick decisions, stretched his teams (sometimes in a questionable manner), and drove incredible focus on the target: a superior product actually in the market.

Ideas are just ideas.  To be successful those ideas have to be turned into products - faster and better than anyone else.

Comments

[Debbie]

Thanks for sharing Kevin,

Makes a person stop and think -- this is true everyday -- maybe a missed investment or career that was just an idea.

[Shari R]

Excellent post! Thank you for the reminder to FOCUS and EXECUTE!

[Robert Drescher]

Hi Kevin

I often agree with you that Apple and Steve Jobs have/had their faults, but with neither is there any disconect with their people, or their customers. Jobs and Apple have shown an understanding that the bulk of their employees belong to the same group of people they sell to, so a product regardless of how different, if it appeals to their employees than there is in all likelihood a market for it.

To often businesses use all types of surveys, experts and executive opinions on what the consumer wants. Instead Apple tells their people to go out and solve a need, by creating a new revolutionary product. When their designers have created it, then Apple actually starts testing it with certain of their past customers, if it passes this stage it goes to production and expanded testing. Surveyed information is always put to the test, if it wasn't their iphones would be every color other than black, white, and silver (the surveys pointed to red, pink, blue, green, and orange), but when given the chance to have any color people actually took black, white and silver in that order regardless of their actual surveyed response.

Being hard and demanding, is not a sign of disrespect, ignoring the work you drove people to do is. Nokia for all their Lean talk, failed at the respoect for people part, their executives all thought they knew more than the rest of their staff. Apple for all their faults at least has that part right they have and show respect to their people and customers, hence they have money, and Nokia is becoming another flash in the pan company that rose to extreme heights only to come backdown.

Most companies could learn from Apple how to show respect for people. Respect for people is not all about being soft and gentle. It is about giving them real work, letting them do it, while demanding and expecting a result, and when they are done actually using following their recommendations, by testing them.

[Ari Krause]

Thank you, Kevin, for the discussion of the importance of ideas and execution. Although brainstorming and ideas can be valuable, Nokia with $6 billion in patents, true wealth and success lies in action, Apple with $100 billion and growing.

Robert's comment really hit home for me. You hear about Nokia's Lean implementation, and you hear about Steve Jobs' questionable management practices. Yet, Apple is the star of the industry, and Nokia is in decline. I haven't heard Apple's push for success described as respect. However, after reading Robert's comment, I agree, Apple shows true respect to its employees and designers by honoring their hard work, and turning the hard work into wealth and the frenzy for the newest Apple products.

[Jon Miller]

Nokia managed to do an amazing pivot from making everything from televisions to paper to rubber boots, to FOCUS on nothing but mobile phones, under the leadership of CEO Jorma Ollila. Unfortunately they became #1 too easily with 40% of the global market share at one point, became complacent and missed some market signals that in hindsight should have been obvious. The choice of Mr. Elop from Microsoft as the CEO so far hasn't signaled an awareness or readiness of the need to make another major pivot in order for Nokia to remain relevant. If they can frame this as another pivot moment there is no doubt that Nokia can thrive in another guise.

[Bryan]

Great reminder to ACT and take the next step, you never know where it will take you!

Thanks, Kevin