Vision and Execution:
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Is there a person/company who had both vision and execution? It’s asking to keep water and air together in bottle and trying to mix them. Both will be there and won’t mix with each other. If you insert too much water in the jar air will run out or vice versa. But both are essential to survival.
Every company should try to balance both of them to keep it alive and moving forward. Obsession with one will kill you eventually. Execution is awesome but lacking vision will leave you empty handed to act in future. This process is gradual and not an instant, so realization is waking up on that decline curve and sees how long it has gone. If its worth to get everything right again or not. Companies die or re-invent themselves in these scenarios.
AMD other one after Engineering vision needed Hector Ruiz's execution. Story is still unfolding in front of us.
Vision also has same problems; too much thinking leaves no time to implement it better. If people don't get everyday food to eat, they can not dream of future as daily needs take first priority. The visionary himself is from separate class who can like a rishi go on without food for years to attain his cherished goal of his ultimate salvation.
Technology and Business:
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Carly's vision (she was not good at execution) with Hurd's execution (he disdains vision). HP suffered for a while but now is securely in race to get ahead of its competitor due to perfect Mark Hurd's execution of Carly's long sighted vision's But Mark will need to give HP a vision before he leaves HP and that will be next CEO. Meantime during his tenure he'll drive vision of HP's R&D (consumer, enterprise) and implement it perfectly.
IBM under Lou Gesterner was all about execution in service market, that’s why other divisions suffered as they needed a vision for their future. Sam has vision but lacks execution rigor like IBM's ex-CEO. His vision has brought back Microelectronics back into business, Linux gaining ground on its competitors but services is suffering. I think Lou knew when he left IBM that in coming future IBM wont need execution rigor as it can get someone to get it right later down the lane, but would need a new big market vision and someone who can put them there at the start point and make it run on the initial blast for a while. Sam must have been the guy. Rest is happening in front of us.
Apple and Nike:
Steve Jobs, as always, is master of putting headlines which people dissect for every obvious reason. But then he won’t be marketing genius if people can think about what he is thinking. The genius in him won’t tie up with Nike for that reason.
Let’s look from another angle, which seems more convincing, more revenue generating and more consumers penetrating.
Medical area.
If it’s a publicity stunt then it wouldn’t have been done.
Let’s take this one step further. As people are becoming more health conscious, they are exercising more, visiting health clinics and health practitioners more. This trend is growing day by day as obesity and baby boomer phenomenon is coming to light. It'll be hard to track daily what these people do and how their health works. IPOD is supposed to capture all that data with the help of Nike shoes. Nike is no 1 in market share worldwide for shoes. (MARKET LEADER).
So IPOD is for doctors and health practitioners to retrieve data to their system for the health analysis. This means more adoption for ITUNES, which further takes a set number of influential consumer classes into ILIFE. The community targeted here is very rich comparatively and don’t have any issues spending that loads of money on coolest gadgets, which work seamlessly in their personal and professional life. APPLE is simply the coolest product. Today a health practitioner may install Itune on your normal PC, but as compelling complete package offering a doctor/health practitioner may buy MAC mini, MAC book, IPOD. It brings more customers, more revenue to Apple and apple gets more entrenched into people's normal day to day lifestyle, which resonates Steve's ultimate vision “IPOD should be indisnsepble part of every person's life". Hence it completes the circle that Nike sells more shoes and apple sells more of ILIFE offerings.
I THINK THIS IS VISION BEHIND THIS PRESS RELEASE BUT WE HAVE TO WAIT FOR COMPLETE EXECUTION TO PROVE IT TO BE TRUE.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060523/nike_ipod.html?.v=6
