Whenever a company becomes wildly successful in a brief span of time, it naturally becomes an object of fascination for corporate executives and even the general public. More than that, it comes to be presented as a new model for business success. Reporters and scholars scour its history and its practices, looking to distill general lessons for other firms to copy. Google is no exception.
For all its success, Google is still a young company, and it has yet to be tested by adversity. We don’t even know whether its approach to management, and in particular its approach to innovation, is a cause of its success or a product of its success — a crucial distinction.
Interesting stuff. More here.
Apple released a ton of updates last night to its popular iLife ’08 and iWork ’08 suites. All of the programs were updated (and iLife had two updates rolled out). Details are scant, but the updates promise to improve overall stability, and increase compatibility. iPhoto sees new greeting card templates for the Holidays, while iMovie sees a few features return from previous versions, such as manual audio fades and still frame creation. Other updates were not as significant. There was also a firmware upgrade for Core 2 Duo iMacs, MacBooks, and MacBook Pros.