By now most of you have probably heard about how Hewlett Packard is purchasing Palm for the tune of 1.2 billion dollars.
It a pretty startling price with an even more startling move for HP, and any company for that matter. HP has mentioned that it’s move is motivated in large part by Palm’s WebOS operating system, not it’s physical smart phones.
I find this a flawed and obviously short-sighted because the consumer wants not only an effective operating system but something that simply looks good in their hands: A good looking product.
A perfect example of this is the new iPad, which, for many reasons, is simply a larger iPhone; yes, it’s so darn sexy and it looks amazing, and the Church could learn a thing or two here…
You see, our strategy and systems and staff might be amazing but our execution (production, environments, programming, creative) needs to match it; inside and out.
The “consumer,” or first-time visitor won’t “see” the strategy, systems, or know many (or any) of the staff. But, they will see the execution and the presentation.
The Church’s ‘purchases’ need to be both strategic from an internal and external perspective and the time spent needs to be balanced. I’ve learned this more and more as I’ve learned to build great products for both the marketplace and the Church.
Spending all our time in one area is always at the cost of all the other areas of ministry and programming.
I hope for the best for HP and Palm and if they have made a mistake then I hope the Church doesn’t follow it.
d3ft punk says
The WebOS platform is the only reason anyone would buy Palm. It was an amazing gambit by Palm, to completely reinvent itself while staying true to its core. Something Apple tried to do with Mac OS X. It is also the gambit Apple tried with the iPhone.
In this case, HP sees that something really rocks, and the thing really rocks because it is great on the surface and great as a platform. Android, OS X Touch, and WebOS are all wonderful platforms. Not to be a WebOS apologist, but it was a solid move.
To your point, I don’t thing HP wasted their money. Sometimes we look at the numbers and we get lost in 1s and 0s. IF God is leading us to victory, He already won, and He’s just letting us in on the fun (e.g. walls of Jericho).