"Innovation" is a glittering generality that tech companies and their admirers feel obliged to assume, but most successful companies are built on execution rather than innovation.
Apple is actually an exemplar of execution over innovation. Since Jobs returned, none of their genre-defining products have been fundamentally novel. Even the iPad represents a category people have been trying to get right for twenty years without success. Apple likes to identify markets with demand but immature products, so that they can learn from the mistakes of earlier entrants and launch with an extremely polished, market defining product.
I don't hold this approach against Apple. On the contrary, I wish there were more companies that obsessed about creating polished, highly-functional products that run a little behind the technological curve, rather than the slapped-together assemblages of new parts from Asian electronics manufacturers' supply catalog that typify the industry.
Apple is actually an exemplar of execution over innovation. Since Jobs returned, none of their genre-defining products have been fundamentally novel. Even the iPad represents a category people have been trying to get right for twenty years without success. Apple likes to identify markets with demand but immature products, so that they can learn from the mistakes of earlier entrants and launch with an extremely polished, market defining product.
I don't hold this approach against Apple. On the contrary, I wish there were more companies that obsessed about creating polished, highly-functional products that run a little behind the technological curve, rather than the slapped-together assemblages of new parts from Asian electronics manufacturers' supply catalog that typify the industry.