Apple is shooting for the Moon. Heck, they may already be there judging from their latest earnings blow-out. Putting it in context with the revelation of their so far super-secret product development approach, I thought it would be nice to look at three learnings from Apple, which I think every envious company on the planet can use to move on from just being jealous towards producing amazing products and services themselves:
- You don’t win by being protective of what you have. If Apple had done that they wouldn’t be here today. Because what was there to protect before the iPod/iTunes, iPhone and iPad? Nothing. Apple was next to bust (thanks BillG for stepping in with a cheque when it was sorely needed). They win because they dare challenging themselves in completely new and incomprehensible directions without thinking about possible cannibalization.
- Design is everything. You start by figuring out what the insanely great product will look and feel like – and then you work backwards from there. You don’t sit down and sub optimize the other parts of the value chain and then see what come out of it in the end. You just don’t. It’s amazing how little thought is still being given to putting the customer at the front, right and centre of the product development process. Oh, and design doesn’t work by consensus. It’s a dictatorship.
- Execution is cut-throat. You don’t win by being nice and trying to get everyone onboard with the project. You find the key executioners and you give them the mandate to go and do what they do best. And of course you hold them accountable for any progress or lack thereof. Nothing must get in the way of being as successful as you can be with your products. Nothing.
I think these are in short some of the key learnings for why Apple is so extremely successful now. They pretty much leave it up to everybody else to think too much about what the right way of developing and executing on great products for consumers is. Apple just do it. The rest of us should be in awe – and learn.
