Gary Hamel interviewed by Peter Day

In a recent edition of Global Business on the BBC, Peter Day interviewed Gary Hamel, Visiting Professor of Management at the London Business School. The one-to-one discussion takes a few minutes to warm up but ten minutes in there is a remarkable discussion about the values, competencies and qualities displayed by Apple corp.

Emerging from the financial and economic crisis, individuals are now more suspicious of large institutions. Fewer people than ever think that executives behave ethically; the wedge between people and organizations has grown wider. There is a “hole in the soul of business” - and Hamel argues that many corporations have become morally untethered using a corporate language that is alien to people.

Maximizing shareholder wealth is a crazy idea, shareholders do not create wealth, employees do. And the approach of Apple is revealing. Apple has effectively reinvented four different industries - it is a company committed to doing extraordinary and beautiful things - they have the mind of engineers and the heart of artists. The consumer experience of Apple is on a different plane to many other different businesses - you open the box and a product pops out ready to use. When you peel away the Apple business, you just get layer after layer of innovation. Apple’s core competence is about the satisfaction that people derive from products.

Apple’s profitability per square foot of retail space is up to four times higher than other top performing retailers - they are more profitable than Tiffany’s! And that - in retailing - takes some doing!