Below is an excerpt from a riveting opinion piece by Wired.com’s Leander Kahney, where he rebuts a recent blog by Forrester CEO George Colony wherein Colony foretells of Apple Inc.’s Sony-esque fall from grace in the wake of Steve Jobs departing this earth. Most avid Apple watchers know Steve Jobs prepared his company for a future without him – not the least of which involved grooming and choosing his successor(s). Have a read below. Link to original article…
Choosing to back up his argument with passages from a dusty 65-year-old tome, Forrester CEO George Colony has written a controversial blog post provocatively titled “Apple = Sony” in which he argues that now that Steve Jobs is dead, Apple is coasting on fumes and will begin its inevitable decline within the next two to four years.
The gist? “When Steve Jobs departed, he took three things with him,” says Colony. “1) [A] singular charismatic leadership that bound the company together and elicited extraordinary performance from its people; 2) the ability to take big risks, and 3) an unparalleled ability to envision and design products.”
Much of Colony’s argument comes down to this assertion: There is no longer a “singular charismatic leader” at Apple. When it comes to reality distortion fields, Tim Cook may be no Steve Jobs, but much of what Colony says about the vacuum of leadership at Cupertino is completely untrue. In fact, Apple’s arguably in better shape now than it ever was when Jobs was at the helm.
Colony claims that when Jobs died, Apple merely “chose a proven and competent executive to succeed [him]” instead of the “special, magical individual” it needed.
