Hardware stole the show at the recent Apple product unveiling. But Apple’s most impressive achievement on display was not a technological feat – although the technology on display was certainly impressive.
Apple’s great feat was the use of their scale to swiftly get the world lined up behind a new model for payments. Apple Pay will be more secure, it will be easier, and it will probably be more profitable for the payments industry as a whole by shifting people away from cash (at least for the time being).
But putting it into practice required an entire ecosystem to move in unison – merchants, consumers, credit card companies and banks. Something that only a company with the massive reach of Apple could do.
Big companies’ struggles with innovation have been well documented – including by me. But there are some things you need to be big in order to achieve. What Apple demonstrated was its power as an “impatient convener.”
The term was coined by Aneesh Chopra, the first US chief technology officer. Chopra, and his successor, Todd Park, have thoughtfully used the unique position of the White House to bring together disparate leaders to drive innovation through mutually beneficial agreements.
Their thesis, which Chopra describes elegantly in his book Innovative State, is that the White House has the pull to sit people down at the table. When the president calls, you answer.
When the president says that you need to come to Washington to discuss something like rolling out smart-grid technologies nationally, you come. And if you are there and the proposal makes sense, you may actually opt in as well – even if there are no demands or formal requests from on high.
Tim Cook, the Apple chief executive, demonstrated the benefits to driving innovation as a massive, mature company. Apple used its power as an impatient convener to move an industry.
Cook showed that, like the White House, when Apple calls, you answer. On its launch date, Apple Pay will be accepted by terminals across the globe that process hundreds of billions of dollars of payments.
Major retailers will let you pay with Apple’s secure payment technology. And now, according to Jack Dorsey, so will millions of Square merchants around the world.
Apple Pay is impressive, it’s groundbreaking and it may just unleash a wave of innovation. To do what Apple just did requires deep industry collaboration. It must have taken months of careful negotiations, a lot of trust and a real threat to inaction.
The companies who would have been happy to sit back on their laurels probably felt that failure to engage would result in large losses. It harkens back to the negotiations that must have occurred with record labels before Apple launched the iTunes store. And it also makes me think: How can each of us use the power of impatient convening to our advantage?
If Apple is audacious enough to use its power to transform a 50-year old industry, how could you use your company’s reach to create meaningful change?
Maxwell Wessel is a member of the Forum for Growth and Innovation, and a vice president of innovation at SAP. In association with Harvard Business Review
