Snippet: Swinging for the Stars ☇

iMore’s Rene Ritchie offers some excellent thoughts on Apple’s hiring of Kevin Lynch:

Steve Jobs once equated the launch of the iPhone to Babe Ruth hitting home runs. Apple as company seems unafraid to swing for the stars. The consequence is that, sometimes, they swing and miss…

…Whether we have faith in Lynch or Apple at this point is irrelevant. Apple’s already swung. And they’re swinging at the guy who championed Flash, but who also brought Creative Suite to the Creative Cloud, and no doubt has formidable skills far beyond YouTube skits.

As someone who has to make hiring decisions of my own, especially in the context of building a team, I find Ritchie’s comments very thoughtful. A lot of people speaking negatively about Lynch are basing it off of prior comments about Adobe Flash, but that’s only part of the picture. He may very well bring a lot of useful ideas and challenge Apple, but also help to improve, especially in the area of services. Sometimes you have to take a chance on someone that isn’t a cookie-cutter representation of what you think of your corporate culture.