Steve Denning of Forbes asks the following about two successful companies:

Why doesn’t GE amaze us like Apple? Obviously in any firm as large as GE, there pockets of innovation. The Ecomagination program is one positive sign, Maybe there are others. Based on the information released by GE, we don’t know the full story.

In short, Apple has embraced ecosystems, communities, and platforms to a much greater than extent than GE has.

In the Age of the Platform, company founders hell-bent on creating something long-lasting (read: Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs, the Google guys) are imperative. Leaders who only want to make their quarterly numbers might do that in the short term, but will they create cultures that sustain long-term innovation and employee passion?