Many executives struggle in the ongoing competitive landscape of technology. With fast-paced changes, staying one step ahead as well as being able to pivot quickly to respond to action are two critical elements to successful leadership.

Apple Inc. has made its third change in the past year to the leadership of the artificial intelligence voice assistance system Siri. Due to many factors, including being outperformed by the competition such as Google Assistant and Amazon Inc.’s Alexa, the company decided to pivot and make the change. 

These two systems have seen incredible growth in 2018, with the Amazon Echo and Google Home claiming each 34 percent of the market. Now John Giannandrea, formerly Google’s head of search and AI, has joined the Apple team and is tasked with getting on the rival’s level from which he came (Verge 2018).

He will be challenged not only by having a new culture and company to fit into, but also by finding a good balance on how to innovate in his new role, as well as taking the best practices that he has from his previous role and applying it to boost the success of the Apple artificial intelligence. Keys to his success will be how quickly he can adapt to the new role, learning, adapting, and making changes along the way to bring Apple back to the playing field of artificial intelligence.

Question 1: What other challenges would a new executive have coming from a competing company?

Question 2: How much change is too much? What cautions should Apple be concerned about with all of the turnover for this position?