Crisis Rebirth: Turning Enemies Into Friends And Getting Out Of Crisis

Now I mentioned Apple Inc Then you will think of all kinds of auras hung over their heads. In particular, at the end of 2007, its share price even soared to $200. But who could have thought that 10 years ago, its stock price was only around 3 dollars. Today I will introduce to you how Apple was from that year. bankruptcy Of crisis Gradually, it is developing vigorously.

Since its inception, apple is a company that sees innovation as the source of the company. It launched many innovative products, not only has achieved technical lead, the successful listing of shares has also proved its success in the market. But by the beginning of 80s, Jobs had been far sighted and found that excellent products needed precise marketing. So the president of Pepsi Cola joined apple, but such a correct decision is the beginning of disaster. After that, the performance of the world-renowned high-tech company continued to decline. By 1997, the company had lost $1 billion in that year and its market capitalization was only $3 billion.

The first thing that brought apple into a state of perdition is Jobs's obsession with technology, ignoring the needs of users. The huge R & D program has resulted in high operating costs. For example, the price of the apple 3 computer is even up to 10 thousand US dollars. In that era, it was almost the price of a car. As a result, the Apple 3 computer only sold 75 thousand units, and his previous product was at least 1 million 300 thousand. Apple alone lost about $60 million. At that time, Apple was still complacent and its products became smaller and smaller. In 1985, Jobs was forced to leave apple.

Meanwhile, PepsiCo began to diversify, developing digital cameras, Walkman, sound systems and even game consoles. This not only seriously dispersed the company's resources, but also made the core products of the company unable to get the proper R & D funds. What is even more frightening is that huge financial pressure has forced apple to authorize its own computer technology to others. This is like trying to make others easy to copy. Microsoft took advantage of this opportunity to acquire many patents in the field of Apple's graphical interface, which made windows 3.1 and windows 95 a great success. Since then, Apple has become less important in the market and struggled for more than 10 years in the depths of suffering.

In desperation, in 1997, Apple's board of directors had to invite Jobs to come back and start a new round of drastic reform.

After Jobs's return, the first thing was to cut down too many product lines. Of course, for a dying enterprise, we can only apply limited resources to limited product categories. In this way, the more than 60 products are reduced to 4 at a time. {page_break}

However, it is not enough to have quality strategy, and we need to find the right product breakthrough point. Jobs chose to stand up where he had failed. The failure of the apple 3 computer was due to the excessive pursuit of the appearance of the product without regard to the technical constraints at that time. But the failure of Apple 3 does not negate Apple's ability and superiority in design. In addition, computers were already entering families, and the most popular models were rigorous designs for commercial use. This time, Jobs decided to start with industrial design and take household as the breakthrough point. He found Johnathan Ive in his dusty resume, and then designed a transparent computer appearance similar to jelly effect, which changed people's impression of computers at once.

The second thing about Jobs's return is to reach an agreement with Microsoft. In the field of operating systems, apple and Microsoft are competitors, but in other areas, they are Cooperation is more than competition. 。 From this perspective, Jobs reexamines the relationship between them, so that not only has a strategic alliance been reached, but also Microsoft has entered into a strategic investor.

In exchange for technology licensing, Apple has not only received investment from Microsoft, but also received Microsoft's commitment to continue developing Office software and IE browser under Apple's Mac platform. Since then, Apple has ushered in a new era.

From Apple's case, we will certainly find Jobs's leadership role and return to the company's origin, but we should see two points:

First, during the crisis, enterprises should re-examine their strengths and weaknesses and find their strongest competitiveness. Concentrating advantages or even all resources and creating products or projects of high quality can effectively help companies out of crisis. Apple, for example, has the advantage of innovative products and industrial design. Of course, although an excellent product or project can lead the enterprise out of crisis, it needs to rely on its all-round strength to achieve vigorous development.

Second, friends and enemies can also be interchanged. Especially in the field of high technology, it is quite common to lead the whole industry through "competitive cooperation". As Jobs returned to apple in 1997, he said meaningfully: "we must give up that narrow idea, that is, Apple's success means Microsoft's failure. We need to have new ideas. Apple's success can only be built on its own outstanding and even great products, so we need help from our competitors, and we also need to learn to be grateful to our competitors.