The first company took “Computer” out of its name on January 9, 2007. The other is now the leading seller of PCs in the world, by some measures at least.

Who Owns The Computer Market?

We all know that Apple is still a money machine - and the best in the world at it. But observers like Dan Frommer are now predicting that “Mac shipments… seem to have peaked for good." That is a stinging comment.

Lenovo, meanwhile, might be the best in the world at making computers - at least the desktop and laptop versions.

So where will these two behemoths end up over the next few years?

Opposing Approaches

Tom Peters' seminal book, In Search of Excellence, listed eight themes that defined the success of the corporations. One rule was “Stick to the knitting – stay with the business that you know.”

Apple might have rewritten that rule. While there have been questions about the research behind Peters’ book, there are few about Apple's success through creating and mastering new lines of business. The iPod, iPhone and iPad are powerful examples of how a company can define its own future by strking out in new directions.

Still, it is very interesting to speculate on which company’s strategy will win in the end. The question draws me back to my days at Apple - when I watched the company set off in the directions that now define it.

What might surprise some people is that the decisions that Apple made were often not conscious ones. They sometimes just happened in Apple’s unique corporate culture.

I have described trying to manage at Apple as trying to herd a bunch of cats over a wall with a pitchfork. To complete the image, there was one person whose voice would send the all the cats over the wall instantly. That person, of course, was the late Steve Jobs.

Different Paths To Different Places

Let me try to shed a little light on why Apple and Lenovo are fundamentally different.

The first difference is Lenovo’s strategy of making sure there is place to buy one of its computer very close to where the consumers are. Even in an emerging market like China, Lenovo's goal is to be within 30 miles of every consumer.

Apple, meanwhile, got to what I like to call its "metropolitan strategy" through a combination of missteps and vision.

In the early '90s, Apple wanted to strengthen its sales presence in the K-12 education market. Instead of hiring more people, it chose to strengthen the agent model by reducing the number of resellers who could be educations agents. As a manager in Apple’s Education division, I had to make some very difficult calls to small rural dealerships and tell them Apple was changing their contract so that they could no longer sell to education customers. For some of these small resellers, losing Apple's education business was a death knell.

That was a misstep.

The vision part came in when Apple figured out that its now-weakened resellers would never do as good a job as Apple-branded stores could. That was the genesis of the fabulously successful Apple Stores.

Not everything has changed. Apple has a history of disappointing its partners. Former and current Apple resellers have endless stories of Apple not letting them sell iPods to predatory specials at Apple Stores to chronic availability problems on hot products.

For its part, Lenovo has exclusive resellers in China and exclusive territories in India. Both setups are very different than the retail situation in the United States - but they've played a big part in Lenovo’s growth and are now actually targets for Apple.

The Business Market

Another huge difference is Lenovo's focus on corporate PC sales. Lenovo has doubled its success in that market, according to The Economist.

At one point, I actually led Apple’s most successful enterprise sales team. We tripled Apple’s sales into arguably the most Windows-centric market in the world, the United States government. But our tiny team were fish swimming against the tide in a company rapidly transforming itself into a consumer powerhouse.

Price Matters

Here's one final point. Apple has come to believe it cannot make anything worthy of the Apple brand at a low price point. Lenovo believes it can deliver quality and still serve customers looking for a good deal.

If they are both right, that's a big win for Lenovo.

China Is Not The Real Issue

First, they both have seemed to be focused on nailing China up as a currency manipulator. This may have been an issue in the past, but is going to become decreasingly important. That’s because China is well down the path to Japanification. The central government has bet the farm on last-generation technologies in solar, transportation, and batteries.

Beijing has flooded the economy with infrastructure projects and financing for construction. Now this is coming home to roost with rampant inflation and soaring wages. Already factory jobs are leaving China for cheaper locales like Vietnam and Bangladesh. So Mitt and Barack, please forget about China. That’s the wrong target.

Instead, focus on our education system. The U.S. education system is actually quite underrated. The university system remains, despite all the cutbacks, the envy of the world. And our public education system, for all its faults, continues to turn out high quality graduates.

But we are in the midst of a revolution in education. Technology has eliminated the need for students to sit and listen to teachers deliver subject matter. Lectures and exercises can be pursued at home, on tablets or PCs, at a student’s own pace. Instead, class time will be used for Socratic study, with teachers answering questions and serving as guides and consultants. 

Rebooting Education

This is a far more efficient way to learn, and numerous startups are jumping on this bandwagon. The question is, how long will it take the U.S. government to get a clue and push down reforms around these new self-paced, Socractic learning methods—replacing the now archaic and largely failed “No Child Left Behind” policies which have shackled schools to arbitrary testing regimes that largely measure rote memorization.

Simultaneously, the rise of the “DIY” and Maker generation will allow students to delve deeper and deeper into functional problem solving as part of education. Yes, chemistry kits have always been available as have model rockets. But today an ambitious high schooler can download Arduino, code up some novel software, and have a unique UAV, or a remote controlled robotic vacuum cleaner. Supporting and encouraging functional, creative learning will help secure our national future.

A New Kind Of Manufacturing

This also ties into another trend that the candidates have missed -- micro and regional manufacturing. Rapid improvements in 3D printing are shrinking the factory to the size of a desktop, blowing up the old advantages of economies of scale. By removing labor from the equation and enabling assembly of small complex objects from CAD files, 3D printing will enable an explosion of boutique manufacturing and unprecedented creativity. What’s more, 3D printing will actually fuel the ongoing revival of big-ticket manufacturing in America.

One of the reasons that Apple builds in China is because all the key fabrication shops and parts suppliers are now over there after the U.S. manufacturing sector hollowed out in Silicon Valley and other technology centers. But when Johnny Ive wants a new enclosure mockup and he can get it from his own desktop or from a high-end 3D printer at a custom fabrication facility, then all of a sudden the benefits of having the people who makes screws and touch screens in the same city goes away because those items can quickly and easily be fabbed anywhere.

Beyond old-line products, these printers will be used for genetic material manufacturing and personalized medicine, medical device manufacturing, micro-solar arrays, and even home building, to name a few. 

What does this have to do with Romney and Obama? 

3D Printers, 2D Regulations

This new style of manufacturing will demand a new, lightweight set of regulations. Just as small farmers have struggled to meet food safety guidelines that larger foodcos can easily digest, small manufacturers using super-clean 3D printing technology could struggle with regulatory burdens born by large factories.

Neither Romney nor Obama seems to have given much thought to the future of manufacturing and that’s not a good thing because the U.S. Federal Government should start crafting economic policies (not subsidies but regulatory changes) designed to suit next generation pint-sized, high-powered factories. 

Granted, our two candidates have a lot to talk about in other areas. But the truth is, nothing else matters if the U.S. economy continues to sputter and growth remains stunted. In that same vein, nothing else matters if our education system fails to produce world-beating graduates (and attract the world-beating immigrant scholars) that have made America the reigning global hegemon.

Focusing scarce energy and political capital on the ghost of China past does not serve our future nor does it provide a viable economic solution to our current woes. America has always won by focusing on the future and clearly seeing where the ball is bouncing, not where it was on the last play. Let’s hope our candidates can refocus forward in time to make the shifts required to keep growing our economy and pay for our profligate past while securing the future for our children and their children. 

Vivek Wadhwa is a Fellow at Stanford Law School and VP of Innovation and Research at Singularity University. Follow him on Twitter: @wadhwa.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.