Is Apple Still Thinking Different?
My friend Professor Gregory Unruh of Thunderbird School of Global Management has written a fine post for Harvard Business Review: “Apple and the ‘Little Dutch Boy’ Strategy.”
Professor Unruh suggests that Apple is behaving like the “Little Dutch Boy,” temporarily plugging the dyke of rising stakeholder CSR expectations with a finger.
The post raises a series of points worthy of reflection.
First, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson faces questions from apparent misstatements on his resume.
Now, board member Patti Hart, who had led the selection of Thompson, has resigned.
What’s the bigger picture?
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employee is forced to face his own words on video. He soon resigns.
The New York Times finds that its business imperatives are at odds with its public obligations as a media giant.
The president of the United States is questioned about a girlfriend from decades ago.
What are the evolving standards for transparency and privacy amid public purposes and obligations?
As one who has applauded WalMart’s recent forays into sustainability and 21st century leadership, I’m profoundly disappointed by the recent, credible revelations of serious corporate misconduct at the highest level of the company.
What is to be done?
There’s a widespread tendency today to think that the challenges of our time are unprecedented. As often as not, such a view is incomplete, a result of not knowing history.
One often recognizes this in discussions of globalization.
The rapid pace of international trade and transactions and relationships is without precedent in the recent past. Yet, much of it would be familiar to people at the dawn of the 20th century.
Economists Michael D. Bordo, Barry Eichengreen, and Douglas A. Irwin examine such issues in their thoughtful 1999 essay, “Is Globalization Today Really Different Than Globalization a Hundred Years Ago?” Recognizing the similarities in scope, they conclude that the intensity of globalization is markedly greater in our time.
In turn, the related tasks of leadership–indeed the operative understanding of leadership–are transformed. The practical implications are profound. This can be seen in considering the real-world differences in international trade.
TOMS Shoes, noted for its “Buy One, Give One” approach, represents the kind of values-create-value enterprise identified in Serve to Lead.
Now, the enterprise celebrated for doing well while doing good finds itself under fire.
California Governor Jerry Brown gave an excellent presentation at the Wall Street Journal ECO: nomics Conference in Santa Barbara the other day.
His insights on our nation’s energy and environmental future were interesting. Irrespective of whether one agrees with his views or record on those or other matters, his talk also prompted some observations on 21st-century leadership and communication.
Google executive Eric Schmidt muses on the collective consciousness occasioned by the Internet, as it continues to expand, becoming truly worldwide, in the next decade.
