GUIDED INNOVATION

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Why Some Companies Just Innovate More Effectively

Apr 7, 2014 · 6 minutes

What if Steve Jobs’s creative genius wasn't the key to Apple’s success? But most importantly, what if his secret sauce was something we mere mortals could apply in our business? Let’s jump in the wayback machine and look at Apple just a few years before the start of the new millennium. The creative folks there offered a broad range of products considered to be the high-end in their markets. If you had anything to do with education, the arts, design, or science there was a pretty good chance you were using a Mac or trying to convince your IT department to let you. Sounds like a wonderful position to be in. But think again. Under the surface, Apple was in complete disarray and within months of bankruptcy. Most have conveniently forgotten that shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple he had to ask Microsoft for a $150 million dollar investment just to keep the lights on. So what did Jobs do to put Apple back on the right track? The pundits expected him to do a big deal or ramp up the new product effort. What he did was just the opposite. Jobs simplified everything targeting the critical few important things and jettisoning the rest. He refocused almost every aspect of Apple on making just a handful of what he would later refer to as insanely great products. Apple went from offering 15 desktop models to just one. Same with laptops. They ditched the printer and peripheral business – even though HP was making buckets of money there. They also got rid of manufacturing in favor of outsourcing and stopped selling through all but one traditional retailer in favor of the web. Jobs seemed to have an innate understanding of something Goldratt later referred to as the “Constraint of Management Attention.” For Apple, that meant people were too distracted keeping all the plates spinning to be able to seize upon the opportunities that Jobs saw coming. But Jobs knew that without a clear, laserlike focus, all of the creative talent would be wasted. In just a few short years, Apple seized the digital media revolution and transformed the market. It started with iMovie and the desktop as a digital hub and then moved on to the iPod with iTunes as a new media hub and eventually onto iPhone and finally iPad. Jobs didn’t have the complete vision in 1998. He simply knew that if they were going to ride the n

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GUIDED INNOVATION

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Why Some Companies Just Innovate More Effectively

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GUIDED INNOVATION

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Why Some Companies Just Innovate More Effectively

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