Whether Apple is # 1 Tech Company or I would leave that up for a debate as it is very subjective.  In my opinion, Tech is a lot bigger than just Macs, iTunes, iPhone, iPad or mobile apps.  However, there is no question that Apple is indeed a great company with Steve Jobs being not only a great CEO but also an excellent marketing machine. BNET's Steve Tobak has some good lessons from Apple's turnaround.  Interestingly enough Luck is on the top of his list, something I have heard from few others in the past too.

I had the pleasure to attend University of Washington's first Redefining Leadership seminar which featured Carol Bartz, CEO Yahoo and was moderated by Robert Herbold former COO Microsoft.  Among the panelists were Dorrit Bern former CEO, Charming Shoppes and Charles Hill, one of my proessors at the Foster School of Business.  Below are some of my notes from yesterday's event.

Innovation is always perceived as something which is disruptive and may result into a new product, service or the business model.  But that is not so true.  Recently, I came across such non disruptive innovation at Mor Furniture.  If we look at the furniture industry, it is a commodity business with low barriers to entry and competitive pricing.  Most of the furniture is made in China and other third world countries and shipped to US in bulk containers.  Furniture outlets go out of business every now and then and more often during the current economic crisis.  Yet, Mor furniture in Kent, WA was packed compared to other furniture stores in the area just a couple of weekends ago.  It makes one wonder about the secret behind Mor winning the business.

While riding a bus to and from work, I read this article on HBR titled What's Your Google Strategy.   While I feel that article title was bit misleading, nevertheless it is a great article for those who are looking to form startegic partnerships.  By using examples such as dispute between Amazon.com and Toy R Us,  Nokia's push for Symbian, Time Warner's support for HD DVD format and LinkedIn's dual strategy with Google Open Social - this article throughly discusses pros and cons of forming strategic partnerships and things to consider beforing looking for a startegic partner.  The article encrouages managers to consider their own and potential partner's long tail and short tail strategies beforing moving forward with a partnerships.  It particularly suggests that one should carefully evaluate their partner's long term strategy by using Toys R Us example on how the relationship with Amazon went sour and ended up costing Toys R Us millions of dollars because they did not evalute Amazon's long term goals before hosting a store inside Amazon.

These days capital preservation is the mantra and bean counters at large and small corporations are in-charge.    But the bean counters who usually make their decisions based on DCF & NPV (two very useful tools) can kill innovation.  A great example is how GM lost all the value it had built by launching a strong brand like Saturn.  This article talks about how they did it.