A Business’ Vision- For Better Or Worse

There’s been a lot of “vision” on display this week, for better or worse.

Google buys Motorola Mobility, pledging a third of its cash for wireless patents, a TV set-top box business and the vision for a path forward. Meantime, HP kills TouchPad, admits to a flawed vision and prepares to exit the PC and tablet business.

Not long ago, I got a better understanding of how a company’s vision works.

I was listening to a 2007 podcast where Apple’s Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates reminisced about the early days in the computer business. Every so often, Jobs would hint at this amazing product under development that he couldn’t talk about.

The iPhone had just been announced but Jobs kept referring to this mystery product Apple had in development. Gates finally started making fun of him because Jobs kept saying he couldn’t say anything more about it.

The product still under wraps, of course, turned out to be the iPad, which was as revolutionary as Jobs had implied. It was fun listening to these cryptic comments — where the audience and Bill Gates were kept in the dark but enough time had passed that I knew what Jobs was referring to.

What struck me about Jobs’ comments was how much time and attention to detail was required before the iPad could be unveiled. In fact, the iPad was in development before the iPhone. But the Apple team realized that the tablet was such a game-changer, it required more development time.

In other words, more vision. Apple continues to hint- iPhone 5 is rumored to come out in the next few months and iPad 3 is being reported for release in Q1 2012.

The lesson was clear listening to my podcast time capsule: vision takes time, clarity and execution.