Apple stakeholders article

“The word is stakeholding. The style is integrity. The profession is business.”

–Anita Roddick OBE, Founder and Chief Executive of The Body Shop

The invention of the smart phone and its innovative software platforms have dramatically changed the way we live our lives. In fact, it’s fair to say that most people cannot imagine going through an average day without the use of a multitude of phone applications that provide us with assistance in various tasks and with social fulfillment. Tech innovators have capitalized on our mobile addictions to create phone applications for just about everything you can imagine. Their goal? An optimist may say: “to make our lives easier.” A cynic would most certainly say: “to make money.” And whether you agree or disagree with either of these points of view, let us just be pragmatic. The data shows that the public has in fact become heavily reliant on technology in their everyday lives and companies who continue to roll out these technologies are raking in revenues by the billions.

But as innovation builds at rapid speeds and the number of application users grows at exponential rates, some companies competing in the “wild west” world of mobile tech are finding out that popularity only gets you so far. And once you begin to hit it big, all eyes are on you, for better or for worse. Managing a big brand in a world where media is now omnipresent and the public ever-engaged can be much more challenging than one may realize. One company facing such a challenge is Uber. The Uber rideshare app was created to provide a more efficient, more economical, and more pleasing alternative to using a taxi service to get from point A to point B. Since its humble beginnings, Uber now services more than 40 million active users every month in over 450 major cities around the world. To put that in perspective, Uber’s main competition, the Lyft app, services just over 3 million active users a month in 65 major cities. Looking at the numbers, one may think that Uber must be doing everything right when it comes to building its company and its brand. But Uber has in fact been in the news lately for reasons which it surely would like to forget: Riders being assaulted by drivers, poor wages making some drivers homeless, predatory lending practices to drivers, and even sexual harassment and hostile treatment within its own ranks. The list goes on and on. After unsuccessful attempts to recover from the fallout, Travis Kalanick, the app creator, stepped down as CEO. Dara Khosrowshahi was hired to take Kalanick’s place behind the wheel of Uber’s leadership to get the company back on the road to success.