Disrupting Traditional Corporate Hierarchies: Apples Founders Approach.

The founders of Apple also broke the corporate culture by removing organizational hierarchy and this can be proven by an example that Steve Jobs used to walk around the office barefoot even at the time when the company dominated the world and this trait is what kept it distinctive from its competitors and this was because he wanted something original in the company and to develop individuality that attracted talented people. In order to give recognition to the employees, Apple also came up with Apple Fellows program that was for those employees who made extraordinary contributions, both technical as well as in terms of leadership.

Steve Jobs created Apple twice as in 1985 he had to leave the company and he re-joined in 1997 and during this period, Apple had to encounter many failures as the person who removed Steve was fired in 1993 and Michael Spindler who took his place licensed Apple technology to the firms operating outside. Apple was then recovered by Gil Amelio and he became the CEO in 1996 and the change that he brought about was that he reduced the payroll and he left the company in 1997 but before that he hired Steve Jobs as his advisor and after Gil Amelio left, he worked as a temporary CEO and this led to the recovery of Apple.

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He again made the company successful and also stopped the licensing; moreover he also eliminated 15 products of Apple from the total 19 products and insisted to make the products that were appreciated by the people such as iMac and iPod.

Previously, Steve Jobs was enigmatic for the company but later he gave importance to the ideas of the other employees at Apple and created such a culture that encouraged the people to come to work. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. When Apple came up with a new product iPod, it hit the market and was sold like cupcakes proving that it was a great success in the market.

1. Strengths - Doing the strength analysis of iPod, we can get to know that the strength of the iPod is its uniqueness and the brand “Apple” that manufactures it so the rate of credibility is very high. The brand name plays a very important role and Apple has loyal customers and is a powerful brand in the market and this should be maintained by the company by serving them the best and giving them excellent customer services. 2. Weaknesses – Apple iPod has been reported to have screens that are faulty and some also have faulty batteries.

Other than this, Apple has been pressurized to increase the price of music download from the music industry that makes more money from iTunes than from the sale of original CDs. One more weakness is that in 2005, Apple announced that it would stop their relationship with IBM and would switch to Intel but this could confuse the customers. 3. Opportunities – Apple can develop iTunes and technology for playing music in mobile phones. Podcasts can also be developed that can enable the listeners to download radio shows and listen to them later.

4. Threats – competition is the biggest threat to Apple and as the industry attracts competition the probability of competitors entering the market is high. There is a high product substitution effect especially in the technology based industries as previously CDs, Vinyl, etc. were more famous but now iPods and MP3 are used more and in the later years, wireless technology could replace these. In a case won by Apple in 2005, Bloggers revealed that three employees of Apple themselves leaked some confidential information of the company.