Horace Dedieu asks and answers a damn good question.
But what I wonder is why there isn’t a desire to copy Apple’s product creation process. Why isn’t the catalyst for a new category or disruption put forward by another company? More precisely, why isn’t there another company which consistently re-defines categories and repeatedly, predictably even, re-defines how technology is used.
Put another way: Why is it that everyone wants to copy Apple’s products but nobody wants to copy being Apple?
I like Horace's analysis, as usual, but I do think there's something to what Tim Cook says about innovation being in the DNA at Apple. The movements of a company reflect the attitudes and actions of leadership. Lots of leaders can't get past the inertia of even well-meaning people to stay the course and keep doing today what they did yesterday. In those companies, change only happens in small increments. At Apple, Steve Jobs got to basically rebuild Apple from the ground up, to infuse the company with exactly the culture he wanted. That's why what Apple does is so had to copy.