Culture Study

Apple Inc. Culture Study

Part 1: Culture Analysis

Innovation is the primary culture character that Apple embodies. Due to its ability to fully engage its core mandates of innovation and creativity, Apple’s culture transcends the company’s boundaries to create an enterprise value that is greater than most nations.

Apple has built an innovation factory including iPod, iMac, iPad and iPhone. When it comes to smartphone innovation this year, Apple is taking the top-down process in consumer innovation. Instead of releasing one new premium product each year, Apple offered the high-end Apple iPhone 5S in gold, silver and platinum to its most affluent customers, and a cheaper iPhone 5C in fun plastic colors for everyone else. The innovative new technologies that are included as part of the iPhone 5S – like the fingerprint sensor Touch ID, the upgraded camera functionality and the new motion sensor chip for fitness apps – were unveiled for the 5S, but not the 5C. Apple’s new approach has consequences for innovation in the smartphone market.

Innovation and risk taking is one of the main characteristics of organizational culture defining how much room the business allows for innovation. Pioneering has its share of risk, but at times it can also have a breakthrough outcome for the organization. As for the new coming iPhone 5S and 5C, the good news is that Apple seems to have deflected earlier criticism related to “incremental innovation.” And, by pricing the iPhone 5C at a high enough price point, there’s no sense that the iPhone 5C will become a cheap, throwaway phone for the world’s lowest-income users. The bad news, though, is that Apple must now hope that all the high-end affluent users out there will use their smartphones in creative ways, and that this creativity and innovation will be passed down to other people argue the various merits of trickle-down economics, we may soon be arguing the benefits of trickle-down innovation.

Apple’s culture of empowering...