Apple's dismal earnings announcement shows why it badly needs to rethink its innovation model and leadership. Its last breakthrough innovation was the iPhone -- which was released in 2007. Since then, Apple has simply been tweaking its componentry, adding faster processors and more advanced sensors, and playing with its size -- making it bigger in the iPad and smaller in the Apple Watch.
Chief executive Tim Cook is probably one of the most competent operations executives in the industry but is clearly not a technology visionary. Apple needs another Steve Jobs to reinvent itself otherwise it will join the ranks of HP and Compaq.
That Steve Jobs may be Elon Musk -- who has proven to be the greatest visionary of our times.
In the same period that Apple released the iPhone and successors, Musk developed two generations of world-changing electric vehicles; perfected a new generation of battery technologies; and released first-generation autonomous driving capabilities. And that was in Tesla Motors. In his other company, SpaceX, Musk developed a spacecraft; docked it with the International Space Station and returned with cargo . He's launched two rockets to space that have made vertical landings back on Earth -- one on a helicopter-like pad and another on a ship in the ocean.
A combination of an operations executive such as Cook and a visionary such as Musk would be formidable.