...as will the iPhone soon, undoubtedly.

I own a 1913 Model T, which I believe is the first year that they were only available in black. According to the same source, it's not known whether Ford ever said that quote or not, and it is true that:

"In the first year, Model T Fords were not available in black at all, but only in Gray, Red, and Brewster Green."

There's a subtle thing here that I think often gets lost in discussions of this nature. The fact is that much (most?) innovation is "top-down" in the sense that there is one person holding the entire idea in their head that ultimately drives its attainment. That person might be a team of one, in which case they are just managing themselves, or they might have 20 people reporting to them that they can direct.

Whether you consider the resulting innovation top-down or bottom-up really depends on the context of that person within their organization. (And if you are in the organization, it depends on your own position in relation to that person).

Consider a manager in a company like Google who has 20 people reporting to her. Imagine that this manager has a vision of some innovation she believes she can achieve through the work of her 20-strong team, and so she manages the team in an extremely hierarchical and directed way in order to achieve it. She sets goals for individuals, she approves all design decisions, she vetoes any aspect of the project - at any level - that she doesn't like or that don't fit into her vision of how the result should look.

If the result of this process is ultimately perceived to be some Great Innovation (say, something like Google Maps), then outside observers are very likely to point at this as an example of why "bottom-up" is the best way to get innovation. After all, the manager was low-level, and was operating outside the direct influence of upper management, such that the innovation "emerged" rather than was designed from the top down.

Yet this same scenario tweaked such that the manager is instead the CEO of a 20 person company suddenly looks like the epitome of "top-down" hierarchy a la Steve Jobs. People will point at the CEO and say that she is controlling and hierarchical. But, again, if the result is good, this will be used as an example for why top-down hierarchies are "good" for innovation.

I've witnessed this directly in my own career. Several years back, as the lead of a team of ~20 people, I developed "innovative" new products that were not dictated by upper management of my 2000-person employer. It was seen as 'bottom-up' innovation in the organization, even though I was fairly hierarchical with the team and driving them to my vision. No matter, it was 'bottom-up' because I was innovating without being instructed by my bosses. Flash forward to being CEO of a 40+ person company with a ~20 person product/engineering team. The same characteristics that brought me success and the perception of "bottom-up" success at the large company are now perceived as "top-down" and controlling in this organization.

Jobs and Ford also agreed (for quite some time) on:

"You can have any color you want, as long as it's black."

If all they try to do is use different part numbers for the same product, it's obvious how it will work out (won't).

Their only Strengths are anything requiring a physical presence (immediate gratification, in-store trial, service/repair, dealing with old people). There are lots of Weaknesses and Threats: inventory, pricing, and the fact that anything that can be duplicated will be sold online for others, and for cheap..

This is a rather straightforward, if ultimately hopeless, attempt to mitigate the Threat by creating unique products that, because they are unique to their store, can't be sold online. Just a protectionist use of trademark.

One Opportunity I haven't seen tried out at a large scale is a model where "in-store trials" are financed even absent an actual sale. For example, let people come in and play with all of your laptops/tablets/cell phones, etc., but charge directly for the access (e.g., $5 for a day pass, applied toward any purchase made, with monthly/annual plans or whatever). Let people browse and physically touch things they might be interested, and if they like it, they're free to buy it wherever they want (e.g., online). With all of the consumer clutter, they could even be providing a new service - curation - to help people find the best available products.

Public corporations have very good accountability mechanisms, but the things to which management are held accountable are not in line with what someone striving for global social equality might like. The company is accountable to shareholders for growth and profit. For a consumer backlash to change a company's operations would require it to interfere with management's ability to show the shareholders that continued growth and profit. Perhaps it's theoretically possible for the government to enforce that Apple (and all US corporations operating globally) to have working conditions "on the same level with the USA's." The essential problem with this is that it would essentially defeat the whole point of outsourcing the operations in the first place -- they're in China because appropriately-skilled people will work there for cheap.

What's really remarkable is that with all of the cash in 'secondary markets' these days it's not like they couldn't get all the growth capital they could possibly want without a public offering (unless they wanted to start a moon base or something).

Even cashing out early investors seems like it would be fairly easy given the institutional cash abundance.

Going IPO these days seems to just be about getting access to less sophisticated investors. Maybe they should just put a "buy a share of FB" button on everyone's Facebook profile and cut out all the middlemen.