Time to Harvest?:

Here’s an immodest proposal from Jean Lipman-Blumen, an international authority on leadership: Let Apple Computer die.

“We shouldn’t necessarily be grieving for Apple,” said Lipman-Blumen, co-founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Leadership at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management Center in Claremont. “This company did something path-breaking: It gave computer access to the ordinary person. But they’re not required to stay in business.”

Americans are obsessed, she said, with wanting to preserve life--both in individuals and in organizations. Just as putting a brain-dead patient on life support makes no sense, so is it foolish to keep alive a firm that might have outlived its usefulness?

Her suggestion: Reallocate Apple’s assets--both financial and human--and let offshoot companies try to recapture the entrepreneurial spark that turned Apple into one of the nation’s liveliest corporate legends.

“We don’t allow organizations that have essentially become diseased . . . to die gracefully,” she said.

Apple squandered many opportunities to turn itself around, said Lipman-Blumen, notably by failing early on to encourage cloning. But, she added, “the fact that they would go out of business or be gobbled up doesn’t gainsay the fact that they did something very transformational.”