January 6 2004: Day 2 of my journal is drawing to a close, and as I start writing, am happy that this initiative hasn't turned out to be one-day wonder !

In the latest issue of Fast Company, the lead article talks about Apple as an innovator that hasnt really been able to capitalise and make money on its innovations. Today, more than a quarter century after its founding (The launch of Apple II created the Personal Computing Industry in 1977), Apple controls only 2% of the 180 Billion $ worldwide market for PCs, being # 9 after, lagging behind Acer (7) and Legend (8). In its history, Apple has issued 1300 patents, more than 1.5 times that of Dell, and half as much as Microsoft, which makes 145 times more money). The author of the article argues that oura "heedless" reverence for innovation is blinding us to its limits, misuse and risks. It is possible to innovate pointlessly, to choose the wrong models for innovations, and pursue innovation at the expense of other virtues that are atleast as important to lasting business, which is consistency and follow-through. The author also goes on to argue that most real innovators are bureaucrats, and in virtually any industry, business model innovators rather than technical innovators have reaped the greatest rewards. Examples of business model innovators are Amazon, eBay, Jet Blue, and of course Dell, which is held up a as a glowing example of what innovation is all about. This is my take after reading the article:

While Apple's failure to capaitalise on some of its its innovations are poor decisions, poor follow though and so on, holding up Dell as a glowing model of innovation sounds rather absurd. Sure their business model has made PC's marginally cheaper, and Dell shareholders are a warm happy bunch, but Dell is actually an anti-innovator. By very clearly regarding itself as a market taker and not a market maker, Dell kills the initiative for others to innovate. If it werent for the persistence of the Apples and other foolhardy idealists of the world, we would live in a far uglier , maybe cheaper place. Moreover, I see limits on Dell's approach to innovation: Cheap clone PC's sold direct. What next ?

CEREBERUS: The Three headed dog guarding the gates of Hell !

On the issue of Dell DJ which is a 2-year late follower of the APple Ipod, there is an article in Fortune that compares SUperman to Bizaaro: Here is the gist of the story: The evil scientist Lex Luthor used his duplicator ray to try to clone Superman, but something went terribly wrong. The result was Bizarro, a good-natured but ugly and backward version of the Man of Steel. Bizarro was the antithesis of cool; his home planet, Htrae, was square.

When Bizarro had good news to announce, he would say, "This am terrible!"

Which leads us into a discussion of Dell's new Bizarro version of Apple's iPod, called the Dell Digital Jukebox Music Player, or Dell DJ for short. Coming from the square world of Dell instead of the hip world of Apple, it's bigger, heavier, and clunkier than Apple's sleek, suave, elegant iPod, which arrived on the scene two years ago and quickly became the most popular portable digital music player on our home planet, Earth. Even worse, the Musicmatch-backed Dell Music Store is the clumsy, Bizarro counterpart to Apple's brilliant iTunes Music Store.

[...]

Bizarro, the pathetic wretch, was driven mad by constant comparisons with the handsome, smart, and sexy Superman he was meant to emulate. So too must the DJ suffer from inevitable comparisons with the iPod, with its two-year headstart. If the iPod did not exist, the DJ might even lay claim to the title of Best Portable Music Player Since the Sony Walkman.

But the iPod does exist, and so do Apple iTunes and the Apple iTunes Music Store, and thus the Dell DJ is doomed to be merely the second-best player on the market.