Apple's most valuable asset

My weekly book post on s+b's blogs is about a new biography of Apple design chief Jony Ive, which offers valuable lessons to leaders seeking to develop strategic capabilities:

How Apple Built Its Design Capability

In the world of industrial design, 46-year-old Jony Ive is a star. He even received a knighthood for his services to “design and enterprise” in 2012. And he certainly deserves the accolades: As the design chief at Apple, he was instrumental in creating the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone.

That in itself is a good reason to read Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products (Portfolio, 2013), by Leander Kahney. But corporate leaders may find the back story more valuable than the designer’s life story. That’s because starting in chapter four, as Ive moves to California to work for Apple, the book’s backdrop becomes the development and evolution of what is arguably the company’s most valuable asset: its strategic capability for design...read the rest here