"There are fewer than 10 people worldwide Apple can hire with the skills they need to organize this right." That's an interesting number. I'm why you chose "1

"There are fewer than 10 people worldwide Apple can hire with the skills they need to organize this right." That's an interesting number. I'm why you chose "10" instead of 5, 20, 50, 100 or 1000? There are a lot of smart people out there, who can get things done. If there were truly only a 100 people world wide that could turn the mapping ship around, then they are worth considerably more than $300K/Year and a "$1mm bonus'. If there were only "10" people in the world who could pull this off, they could command pretty much any compensation they wished - and it would be in the hundreds of millions based on what I've read about the budget for large scale mapping systems ($8B at Nokia) I'm guessing, that properly incented, there are a couple thousand people that Apple could reach out to who could, in short notice (2-3 years) lead Apple maps to the same quality that Google Maps is today. And such a position would command a salary around $300-$400K/year, with around a $10mm (all in) bonus for successful delivery on that time line. (Presuming that leading such an organization requires skills, experience, and knowledge so rare that there are only 2,000 people on the planet that can do it in 3 years) The real question is whether Apple really want to invest in maps. Via Philip Elmer Dewit: ""Not doing its own Maps would be a far bigger mistake," says Asymco's Horace Dediu, who addressed the issue at length in last week's Critical Path podcast. "The mistake was not getting involved in maps sooner, which was on Jobs' watch. Nokia saw the writing on the wall five years ago and burned $8 billion to get in front of the problem. The pain Apple feels now is deferred from when they decided to hand over that franchise to Google at the beginning of iPhone."" Does Apple really want to invest $8 Billion into Maps? Is there really $8 Billion worth of value there?