What is the difference between Intelligence and Common sense?

I will analyse it using an unfolding story!

Yahoo (and Lycos, Alta Vista..) made a search engine much before Google did. That’s first-mover intelligence.

All of them failed to see Google’s inherent strength when they could have smashed it - that’s lack of common sense and wisdom. And very bad luck.

Google decided to plod on, and build on it. That’s tenacity coupled with intelligence.

Some early investors made a killing. That’s foresight, intelligence and luck combined.

Yahoo still did not see any value in it. That’s a total lack of common sense.

Google kept building on its success. And then launched social media tools (Wave? Buzz?). That’s ambition, and tenacity. But with little wisdom.

Facebook romped home with a much better strategy and product. That’s intelligence.

Google continued fighting. Continues to. With G+.

Facebook trampled it. That’s tenacity coupled with intelligence.

Whatsapp emerged. That’s super-intelligence. Yahoo - the employer - misses again.

Yahoo got hammered in the long run.

How do the companies like Microsoft appoint CEOs?

A great question
Someone asked this on Quora, and I felt compelled to try and answer.

A giant in transition

I think these giant companies follow this process:

Step  1. Identify potential talent within the organisation that can be ultimately elevated to the top post (the corner room, as it's called). 
Explanation. In some cases, outsiders can be considered, but that rarely proves to be a good decision.

Step 2. See if the identified talent has stayed long enough with the company. 

Explanation. Long enough can vary from a few years to a whole lot of years, depending on the type of work the company does, to have absorbed the company's culture (dna, as they call it!) And obviously if an outsider is chosen for the top post, then this step loses meaning.

Big 5 lessons from Apple's success

Eye-popping sales figures... Industry-shaping technological prowess... Mind-numbing financial strength

What a tremendous success it has been! The Apple juggernaut has trounced all pundits' expectations, steam-rolled all competition into pulp, gatecrashed into the 'PC' market with unquantifiable fury, and totally destroyed all existing business models in its industry.

It is a heart-warming story for those who have followed (the late) Steve Jobs' life and times.

It is a detestable nightmare for the likes of HP, Dell, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia and Google.

It is grand fodder for case-studies that are being churned from leading b-schools portals.

But what is it that's made this amazing success possible? Can it be replicated by Apple itself in the future, or by anyone else? How far can Apple really go? Will it end sometime?

Here is my analysis of the Big 5 lessons from Apple's decade of uncontrolled steam-rolling, left-right-and-centre!

1. Mega success is a unique template

Really big successes - where companies trample everyone else and romp home with full glory - are almost always based on unique business models. There is nothing "standardisable" about such models except the underlying features - genuinely unique disruptive models, firm belief in what the company is trying to achieve, and a loyal fan base. So Apple's model of success just cannot get replicated by someone else. Students of management will remind us of the commoditisation phenomenon, rightly. But other than that, corporate history teaches us that such "repeats" by someone else is almost impossible. Just check out the stories of Microsoft, GE, WalMart, McDonalds, Dell, and Google to get a feel. In each of these cases, no one could repeat their business models with similar success rates.