From Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future
The modern world of high tech provides important examples of organizational practices that effectively support complex systemic processes. I think immediately of Apple Computer in its years under Steve Jobs. Apple’s design team took at its point of departure a specifically more encompassing—more systemic—kind of referent than we tend to see in the business world. Rather than focusing from the beginning on profitability, the design team members asked what kinds of devices they personally would most love to have. They also executed their imaginings with a deep commitment to quality, beauty, and the experience of the user—to making every aspect of each of their products, as they described it, “insanely great”—a choice even more radical in its systemic implications. In doing so, Jobs’ design team gave, art, the social sciences, and the hard sciences equal roles in the design process.
Apple did something else that reflects a rare degree of systemic sophistication. Rather than focusing resources on one part, or a few parts of the company, it brought Apple’s innovative culture to every aspect of its efforts—not just hardware and software design, but also supply chain management, marketing, and distribution, both online and through the Apple stores. Everyone became part of the creative picture. In Apple’s example we see an important model of what American industry can be, and must be, if it is to continue to provide world leadership.