Like most people in tech, I eagerly watched the release of the Apple Vision Pro. Most of the talk after the event, for natural reasons, has been about the product itself. But I think it’s just as interesting to think about what it says about Apple as an organization.
Even though the Vision Pro looks impressive and game-changing (we will see when we try it) as a product, it’s just as impressive that Apple attempts a project like this, regardless of how good the product turns out to be.
As an investor in startups, I’m used to seeing the most disruptive innovation coming from outside of large corporations. Sure, corporations innovate, but it’s mostly the kind of incremental, backward-compatible innovation that builds on top of the successes that a company already has. Either that, or as an attempt to move into new products that complement the existing portfolio. Most large corporations are cautious about doing anything that doesn’t protect existing cash flow, which is one reason why a lot of innovation tends to come from the outside, large corporations only catching on once they realize that they must.
This resembles the innovation that Apple has been doing for some time. Their development efforts have been focused on incremental improvements to their existing products (mainly the iPhone), new products that complement the old ones, or expansion that increases their take-rate related to existing products, both downward and upward. Upward into hardware that they once procured, and downward into software and content that third-party app developers provide on their platforms.
But this time Apple really did think different, as the old slogan goes. If it’s successful, the Vision Pro will very much compete with several of Apple’s own high-end productivity tools, at least the Macbooks and some of the Macs. Apple is driving a change that will potentially disrupt its own products. It’s an organizational and leadership achievement to carry out a project like that. It also takes a lot of guts, since short-term shareholders of Apple probably are uneasy about spending large sums on developing a product that risks upsetting some of the company’s main cash flow generators. But in the long run, it’s the right thing to do.