Question
Is Apple facing extinction in the future?
Answer
Fascinating and very important current question. I'll provide a broad, general answer and apply it to Apple.
"Ever" is a really really long time. The longest-lived business documented was Kongo Gumi, a Japanese firm involved in temple construction that operated between 578 AD to 2006. Or about 1400 odd years. Wikipedia has lists of the longest-lived businesses.
Two recent research findings are of interest. The first is that average company lifespans in the S&P 500 have been shrinking since 1930 or so.
http://www.amazon.com/Creative-D...
The second is the empirical modeling work of Geoffrey West from the Santa Fe institute showing that what makes companies (and people) mortal is what makes them different from things like cities, which seem to be at least very long-lived and perhaps effectively immortal.
Many, like Zappo's Tony Hsieh, believe that the results indicate corporate immortality is possible with clever design that is sufficiently inspired by cities.
Putting all this theory together with more theory about cities, corporations and business models that I don't have time to go into (Richard Florida, Geoffrey Moore, Clayton Christensen), we can say there is a decent chance that someone will figure out the secret sauce for what I have started calling Superlinear Corporations.
http://www.informationweek.com/t...
Apple is the current corporate darling of business gurus AND Wall Street, a rare accomplishment. How close to superlinear is it?
All the above things considered, not very. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being genuinely superlinear, I'd rank it a 2 or 3. To be fair, most modern business cluster at that lower end and have little hope of immortality. Among the tiny handful that I think has a shot is Amazon, which I'd rank at 6 or 7.
This is, by the way, the first time in business history that we can even provide such half-systematic answers as opposed to phenomenological or case -specific answers. It's like being able to talk about aging from a systems biology perspective instead of being limited to talking about specific diseases.
Can Apple get to 8 or 9? Not to sound callous, but now that Steve Jobs is dead, there is a slight chance because in many ways what is needed for immortality is being open to exactly the sorts of business ideas that Jobs was not.
"Ever" is a really really long time. The longest-lived business documented was Kongo Gumi, a Japanese firm involved in temple construction that operated between 578 AD to 2006. Or about 1400 odd years. Wikipedia has lists of the longest-lived businesses.
Two recent research findings are of interest. The first is that average company lifespans in the S&P 500 have been shrinking since 1930 or so.
http://www.amazon.com/Creative-D...
The second is the empirical modeling work of Geoffrey West from the Santa Fe institute showing that what makes companies (and people) mortal is what makes them different from things like cities, which seem to be at least very long-lived and perhaps effectively immortal.
Many, like Zappo's Tony Hsieh, believe that the results indicate corporate immortality is possible with clever design that is sufficiently inspired by cities.
Putting all this theory together with more theory about cities, corporations and business models that I don't have time to go into (Richard Florida, Geoffrey Moore, Clayton Christensen), we can say there is a decent chance that someone will figure out the secret sauce for what I have started calling Superlinear Corporations.
http://www.informationweek.com/t...
Apple is the current corporate darling of business gurus AND Wall Street, a rare accomplishment. How close to superlinear is it?
All the above things considered, not very. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being genuinely superlinear, I'd rank it a 2 or 3. To be fair, most modern business cluster at that lower end and have little hope of immortality. Among the tiny handful that I think has a shot is Amazon, which I'd rank at 6 or 7.
This is, by the way, the first time in business history that we can even provide such half-systematic answers as opposed to phenomenological or case -specific answers. It's like being able to talk about aging from a systems biology perspective instead of being limited to talking about specific diseases.
Can Apple get to 8 or 9? Not to sound callous, but now that Steve Jobs is dead, there is a slight chance because in many ways what is needed for immortality is being open to exactly the sorts of business ideas that Jobs was not.