The answer is reflective of a greater and deeper philosophy and belief system that permeates Apple.

“We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that’s not changing,” Cook declared.

“We believe in the simple not the complex…We believe in saying no to thousands of products, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us,” he added.

“We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in ways other cannot…And I think that regardless of who is in what job those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well,” he concluded.

When reading this blog it remidned me of the work of one of my lecturers from the AGSE at Swinburne Prof. Murray Gillam who was looking into the role of Spiritual intelligence and how it defines and drives entrepreneurs.

Worth a read and thinking about when it comes to what you believe in, what you want your company/brand to stand for and why you want your customers, whoever they are, to care.

This policy marks an interesting point in the history of renewables. The reasoning behind this move is thought provoking. The Danish Minister for Climate Change, Energy and Building commented , “This will prepare us for a future with increasing prices for oil and coal.”

This would seem to indicate that the modelling no doubt undertaken by the Danes clearly shows an upward trend in energy prices. Nothing new there, except to say that the conclusion was that significant investment now in clean energy clearly makes financial sense across a range of metrics. Simply put, the ROI makes sense.

Cogentum has long said that any new technology reaches a tipping point in terms of acceptance and adoption when simple economics become overwhelming. Think the iphone for under $1000. The ability to redefine the price of a new technology within the context of the current solution set is an important part of any commercialisation strategy.

While there is an awful lot of hype and hyperbole around innovation, with fluffy brainstorming, new fangled ways of developing even better ideas, ultimately innovation will succeed or fail based on one thing. ROI. If you can show a clear path to ROI success is assured.

This will, in time, become a classic case study of Australian innovation. Truly extraordinary thinking that has resulted in a breakthrough technology coupled with the power of a commercial strategy based on Cogentum’s market orientation principles.

More to come!

We are always pushing our ethos of ‘market orientation’ - the notion that success lies in constantly focusing on customer needs and delivering value via these needs. This may seem like an obvious philosophy, however, the gulf between saying and doing remains large.

What is becoming increasingly obvious is that the companies that do maintain a tight focus on their customers and deliver value to these customer by clealry identifying and articulating their needs succeed, and those that don’t fail, and fail spectacularly.

With this in mind it was enlightening to read a recent article in the Economist providing a side by side analysis of the Kodak and Fuji Film experience. Polar opposite outcomes  - one taking a broader view of their customers  and what their needs were, one choosing, tragically, to ignore them. This would be one of the better examples of a lack of market orientation and the consequences.

One of the best articles we have seen in some time

]]> http://blog.cogentum.com.au/archives/109/feed http://blog.cogentum.com.au/archives/108 http://blog.cogentum.com.au/archives/108#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:01:43 +0000 michael http://blog.cogentum.com.au/?p=108 ten lies never to tell investors - a great article from Inc magazine which continues to reinforce why remaining market orientated is so important in all businesses, not just start ups!

Mike Hirshorn was a co-founder of iconic Australian biotech Cochlear and a director of Resmed in its early days. He played an instrumental role in driving the sector to a level of maturity and sophistication where it could compete and succeed globally. As both a Director, investor and thought leader in this sector, Mike made an indelible impression on all those he came into contact with.

In addition, to all of his many commercial successes, Mike was a truly wonderful man who gladly gave his time to many within the industry and more broadly within the community. His wonderful and wicked sense of humour, insight and extraordinary wisdom will leave a gaping hole in the Australian life sciences sector and more broadly within the Australian business sector.

Our most sincere heartfelt condolences to his family and colleagues.

Mike, we will miss you greatly. Thank you so much for your friendship and for so generously sharing your knowledge and wisdom with the Cogentum team. There was so much more we wanted to ask you, so much more we wanted to learn from you. You are and will always remain an inspiration. RIP.

The sheer number of apps appearing is quite extraordinary. The impact of this on well established value chains is frightening

W

Mind you, quite often the conversation quickly veers off onto subjects that may seem unrelated to Biotech, which our patient and bemused business partners will attest to. But, trust me, they somehow always are!

Usually our conversations are conducted over the phone. And to be perfectly honest they go for a long time - sometimes over an hour! However, no matter how long they go for, they always, and I mean always, end a bit like this.

One of us seems to start to lose concentration and then after a couple more minutes and usually half way through a particular train of thought, an announcement is made, “Look I have to go… but I will call you back later.” End.

I have always assumed that we both move on to our next meeting, the next urgent issue we need to contend with. Or do we? One also might be mistaken for possibly thinking that the listener has suddenly gotten bored by the conversation and simply decided to cut it short. But I promise you David, this has never been the case on my part at least. And now I have scientific proof!

“Prof Paul Maruff, Chief Science Officer at CogState Ltd (ASX:CGS) and Professor at the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria, Australia received one of 10 Ig Nobel Prize awards during the annual ceremony last week at Harvard University. He and his co-authors and colleagues from the Lifespan Hospital System in Providence, Rhode Island and Yale Medical School, New Haven, Connecticut were recognized for their work which found that an acute urge to void the bladder can result in impairment in cognitive function the magnitude of which was greater than that found for 0.05% blood alcohol concentration or with 24 hours sleep deprivation.”

Having two sons, aged five and three, I have often noted this relationship. It is usually accompanied by the hoping from one foot to another. However, when it comes to my own behaviour I must confess I have often struggled with ending a conversation with the truth. “Sorry I haven’t heard a word you’ve just said as I am busting for a pee, I’ll call you back”. Instead I have always gone with the ending described above, the abrupt,” Look, I have to go”.

So just to avoid any confusion in the future, if the conversation suddenly ends, put it down to a touch of cognitive impairment!

The iphone is having such an impact. Not just in the consumer area, but especially so in the medical field where medical device development and manufacture is characterised by massive investment in bespoke, highly sophisticated technology.

Increasingly, developers and researchers are building apps and accessories that ‘do the job’ of what was previously highly expensive and highly complex technologies. One such recent example is in the space of medical imaging. Some researchers out of UCLA Davis have managed to cobble together with $40 of lenses and an app a medical imaging device capable of identifying individual blood cells. Not bad, hey!

The ability of developers with both medical device experience and those within the general web/IT industry to build specific apps and then additional accessories that harness the iphone’s base technology provides a very real and credible threat to the medical device industry.

Much of the research on innovation and disruption, especially that by Harvard’s Prof Clayton Christensen, often points to fact that industries and businesses are disrupted by those from outside the industry.  With society (the payer) placing an increasing emphasis on the cost of healthcare and the existing industry trying desperately to keep a lid and/or cut R&D costs, it strikes us that the medical device industry is ripe for significant disruption. The iphone/ipad is increasingly looking like the catalyst for this change.