Apple Inc.’s dismal earnings announcement shows why it badly needs to rethink its innovation model and leadership.
Its last breakthrough innovation was the iPhone — which was released in 2007. Since then, Apple AAPL, +0.04% has simply been tweaking its componentry, adding faster processors and more advanced sensors, and playing with its size — making it bigger in the iPad and smaller in the Apple Watch.
Chief Executive Tim Cook is probably one of the most competent operations executives in the industry but is clearly not a technology visionary. Apple needs another Steve Jobs to reinvent itself; otherwise it will join the ranks of HP and Compaq.
That Steve Jobs may be Elon Musk — who has proven to be the greatest visionary of our times.
In the same period that Apple released the iPhone and successors, Musk developed two generations of world-changing electric vehicles, perfected a new generation of battery technologies and released first-generation autonomous driving capabilities.
In his other company, SpaceX, Musk developed a spacecraft, docked it with the International Space Station and returned with cargo. He’s launched two rockets to space that have made vertical landings back on Earth — one on a helicopter-like pad and another on a ship in the ocean.
Musk is also developing the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors. In discussions that I had with him in 2012, Musk told me that his ambition was to build a space station and retire on Mars. He wasn’t joking, I expect he will do this.
Apple has reportedly been developing an electric vehicle because it sees a car as an iPhone on wheels. It is conceivable that it will demonstrate something like this in the next five to 10 years.
But Tesla already has this technology — and it is amazing. I have likened my Tesla Model S to a spaceship that travels on land. I consider it to be better than any Apple product — because it is more complex, elegant, and better designed than anything that Apple offers.
Apple should buy Tesla and appoint Elon Musk as CEO.
