Apple Inc.: a brief overview
The modern era of the corporate world is the era of “knowledge-based economy.” Every organisation is trying to evolve their knowledge sharing system because success and failure of the organisation now depend on how they are using the information they have. “Knowledge is Power” so one has to store, manage, and use it to maintain an advantage over others. Such things raise the organisation as a knowledge-generating, knowledge integrating, and knowledge-protecting organisation. Knowledge management helps the organisation to bring innovation to the organisation that further leads to better organisational performance.
Apple Inc. is one of the leading and world’s best mobile (I-phones), Laptops, I-pads, and smart watches manufacturing company and known for their innovative thinking and technological advancement. Apple is also known as the best company who implement a knowledge management system in the organisation. However, the company faced strong competition after several other mobiles and personal computer-manufacturing companies like Microsoft, Samsung, Nokia, and IBM entered the same industry. This required Apple to implement Knowledge Management in the organisation to improve their performance in terms of technical, production, and output aspects. This report shows the process of implementation of knowledge management and what were the challenges the company faced during the implementation of a knowledge management system.
Apple Inc. is one of the leading American Mobile phone and Personal computers manufacturing company, which is also known for their other products such as portable music players and media devices. Apple Incorporation is a popular company in the world and incorporated on January 3, 1977. The company was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in 1976 to develop and sell Wozniak’s Apple I personal computers. Currently, Arthur D. Levinson is the Chairman of the company and Tim Cook is the CEO. Apple is known for creativity and innovative approach in their products like Apple smart watch and Apple I-phones. Apple is also known for the latest technologies used in their personal computers, Laptops, and I-phones. Although the Increasing competition and a large number of competitors force Apple to Implement knowledge management system in the organisation, and improve their productivity and organisational performance, this company can easily face the global competition in the manufacturing of mobile phone manufacturing.
It has been said by many people that learning is necessary for creating own culture in the organisation and is a continuous process that helps an organisation to develop, adapt, and transform themselves to meet the future needs and face the competition in the globally competitive world (Jain and Moreno, 2015). Apple is known as a learning organisation that includes five major factors such as system thinking, Personal mastery, mental models, building b shared vision, and team learning. Knowledge management is a tool for learning implementation (Gholami, Asli, Nazari-Shirkouhi, and Noruzy, 2013). A knowledge management system is required to support the distribution of knowledge and support learning.
Importance of Knowledge Management in Apple Inc.
Another challenge was faced by the Apple Company that company was facing strong competition in mobile phone manufacturing sector where a large number of famous companies like Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, and some other Chinese companies (Valentim, Lisboa, and Franco, 2016). Although, Apple launched its I-phone in 2007, and the other Apple products such as Apple I-pod and MacBook gradually show up in all over the world. Thus, it can also be said that Knowledge management plays an important role in stimulating innovation and fostering creativity in Apple Inc. (Kasemsap, 2016).
A large number of people believe that Knowledge management is the core competency of Apple Inc. that is also displayed in their corporate culture and in their innovation value processes. Company implement learning through knowledge management and the major focus was on innovation and creativity. Apple first developed a knowledge model and then knowledge management framework has been used to analyse Apple’s Inc. Apple show how knowledge management improves the organisational performance and is relevant to a company in terms of technical production, and output aspects. Even it helps to compete with competitors and always stay one step ahead. The top executives of Apple think that knowledge management not only helps in the innovative approach and compete with other players in the market rather it also helps in the line of production. Apple Inc. used Senge’s five disciplines to exam its organisational learning success:
- System Thinking:The system thinking helps to understand the whole problem or system such as people, procedure of work, rules, work environment, and structure. It also helps in determining the advancement of the organisation.
- Personal Mastery:Personal mastery focuses on personal goals and self-development of employees and people working in the Apple Inc. The Former CEO Late Steve Jobs addressed that manager should set reasonable goals for both staffs and for self as well and inducing training programs on the regular basis to improve the learning.
- Mental Mode: The mental mode focuses on principle foundations and willingness to learn and adapt the new concept faster than competitors.To follow the mental model,
Apple has changed its production system and instead of producing only computers and i-phones, they produce smartwatches, computer electronics, and other sphere parts of their devices. - Building Shared Vision: The main focus of the company is to make aware the customers about the Apple products and consulting them to know about their requirements, and co-creating new products and new features in existing products. Many professionals of large companies resigned from their position in order to be employed by Apple, because they saw that Apple was offering something different.
- Team Learning: This discipline focuses on developing the performance and improves the team productivity to create the results is what the member of teams truly desire. A good leader leads the team from the front and converts the impossible task into a possible one.
To collect knowledge from different sources, Apple Inc. had formulated solid policies, methods, and logic. The company collected information from various sources such as Stakeholders, customers, staff, for its KM tool. The implementation process of knowledge management went through several steps. These are as follow:
- Infrastructure Evaluation: The very first step before implementing knowledge management is to evaluate the infrastructure of the organisation.
- KM system design and development: The second phase is creating a design for the KM system and ensuring there should be an effective leveraging of infrastructure that is needed for the implantation of the KM system. Apple focuses on the objective of the system, cost of the system, future plans, and strength and weakness of the system. In this phase company generally focuses on knowledge audit and analysis, design the KM team that further creating KM blueprint, and develop system. Through this, Apple was focusing on great technological products and constantly focusing on innovation (Donate and de Pablo, 2015).
- Deployment: In Apple, there is a large number of people are working including engineers, managers, technological experts, etc. and company provide them with a very good working environment. Through this, Apple mostly focuses on Result driven incremental methodology and thus company had to focus on their culture that how the KM system fit in the organisation without affecting the employee and its shareholder’s interest.
- Evaluation: Evaluation of KM system is the last phase in KM implementation. Looking at Apple’s performance it can be said that desire to work in Apple Inc. is a dream of many people, and even competitors are looking for quickly copy the Apple product features. Apple usage KM as a tool to measure the relevancy of their innovation in the products and culture of the company also supported Apple’s KM system implementation in the organisation.
Apple has encountered numerous challenges and problems during the process of implementing KMS. The major challenge that Apple has faced is about managing the knowledge source because it exists in the company in various forms and is widely distributed. Thus, there was a need for a common interface that would help, allow, and access all the different types of knowledge. Another problem was that the company sometimes fail to manage and capture learning experiences. The System did not capture tacit information that inherent within an individual (Yeh, Yeh, and Chen, 2012).
Secondly, there is often an informal and inadequate communication within the organisation and outside of the organisation across the various, such as on functional and geographic basis, which limit the process of updating knowledge (Meihami and Meihami, 2014).
Challenges faced during the implementation of Knowledge Management in Apple Inc.
Another challenge that the company faces were that Apple culture is one of the best organisational cultures in the world. Thus, it is important to manage the culture, which could easily adapt the KM implementation. For example, employees raise issues which were not appropriate to bring up to a senior manager or a top executive of the Company, but now they can post their query on ‘Can we talk’ section of the internal HR website. Apple is known for their culture and they do not believe in changing their culture regularly. Thus, Company has to do a small change, especially in their leadership culture.
Another challenge is the retrieval and process of knowledge data and sources. The complex process of codification and classification was required to acquiring knowledge that lead to the resistance of people because most of the people who were not aware of such processes, they were hesitating or resisting the change.
Knowledge management is Apple’s fundamental core competency. The main cause behind the success of knowledge management is a lucrative attribute and innovation of the company. Knowledge is a precious and valuable resource in any organisation and thus most of the organisations are advised to remain competitive and for their survival in the market they must create, manage, locate, capture, and share the organisational knowledge and expertise, thus they can use such knowledge for the growth and innovation in the organisation (Hitt, Ireland, and Hoskisson, 2012).
The implementation of the KM system in Apple Inc. gave an edge over its competitors and improved the productivity of the company and its innovation strategy. Through the KM system, Apple ensures its overall performance improvement in delivering the exact product that customer wants from the company (Frank, et.al. 2011). People know that Apple is best known for its creativity and innovation. These two are the fundamentals thing in the success or failure of any organisation and it is also responsible for the sustainable development of the company (Dustin, Bharat, and Jitendra, 2014).
Apple Inc. is known for its world’s best Knowledge management system and policies. The knowledge management system of the company helps Apple in fostering creativity and stimulating innovation (Kianto, Ritala, Spender, and Vanhala, 2014). Knowledge management tool helps the company to recognize situations and things beyond the realm of normal expectations in science and technology to guide and direct innovation trends. Knowledge management not only improves the innovation of the company but rather it also helped in facing competition (Castillo and Cazarini, 2014). Fact is that innovation as the key resources of Apple and that helps the company in showing high path dependency that makes a big sustainable competitive advantage over its competitors. The inter-compatible products of the company also helped in ensuring the success of the company and thus the effectiveness of Knowledge management system improved (Tseng and Lee, 2014).
Benefits of Knowledge Management for Apple Inc.
The successful knowledge management system fastened in collaboration and collaborative success. Thus, Apple focuses on link their production and supply chain activities with other collaborative partners. Although, Apple also tried it in 2011, when the company collaborate with Motorola and manufacture a device named ROKR (Reich, Gemino, and Sauer, 2014). The success metrics of Knowledge management in Apple also show the way towards innovation and creativity of people and organisation both. The Knowledge management system is also exploiting the intellectual strength of the company (Dalkir, 2013). Apple also believes that expertise of workers is essential for their growth and better knowledge management system. Thus the success metrics of knowledge management in Apple focuses on the expertise of workers in designing new software and products that meet the consumer demands and adding latest features in the product that help the company to compete with its competitors (Holsapple and Wu, 2011).
Source: Lyles, 2014
Another requirement of a successful knowledge management metrics is flexibility that can be adjusted in any circumstances. The effectiveness of knowledge management system of Apple Inc. designed on such a parameter that is helpful in measuring the performance of both organisation and its people (Said, Abdullah, Uli, and Mohamed, 2014). Adaptability of the dynamic business environment is the basic need of any knowledge management system and it was well ensured by the Apple Company while they are designing and implementing the knowledge management system in the organisation (Saeed, et.al. 2010). The importance of customer need is important in any business organisation; especially in mobile manufacturing and Apple understand this concept very well. Apple designed its knowledge management system in such a way that meets all the requirements of both its mobile phone users and its organisational people as well and the innovative approach of the company will be boosted with the support of its knowledge management system.
Conclusion
Apple should work in collaboration with government, educational institutions, and other private companies and should also establish a good relationship with them in order to constitute a major source of profit in the general PC market. Apple should also collect data and knowledge related to other product pricing strategies because Apple’s products are too costly in comparison to other mobile phone manufacturing company. Good use of the knowledge management system definitely helps the company to find out the future trends in the mobile phone industry.
In Conclusion, it can be said that knowledge management is an essential tool for any organisation to remain in the competition in the respective industry and markets. Apple Inc. is a great example of implementing KM in the organisation and successfully using it for their innovation and creativity. Apple is the best known mobile manufacturing organisation and the role of knowledge management in Apple is also crucial considering their overall development. The company has a very good knowledge management team that consider both organisational interest as well as its customers’ interest that leads to the success of its knowledge management system. Apple used tools such as data warehouse, expert system, and company intranet for the knowledge management and knowledge sharing within and outside of the organisation.
Conclusion
References
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