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I love outsourcing disaster stories. Business strategy 101: never outsource the functions that give you competitive advantage. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/art
by spolsky 18y ago
I love outsourcing disaster stories. Business strategy 101: never outsource the functions that give you competitive advantage. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000007.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000007.html
- robg 18y agoBut you can outsource in a strategic way, right? Like McDonalds, and KFC, with their seasonings - no one vendor knows all the ingredients or their quantities. Didn't Apple take a similar path with the iPod and then the iPhone? They rolled one critical aspect of the product themselves - the software - but the competitive advantage of the hardware was strategically outsourced.
- cstejerean 18y agothe competitive advantage of the apple hardware lies in the design, not the actual manufacturing of it.
- robg 18y agoSure, but if it was as simple as ordering parts from vendors couldn't anyone reconstruct either product on the hardware side?
- orib 18y agoThey can and do, for the most part. iPhone knockoffs are a dime a dozen, for the most part, although Apple has design patents to keep them from looking too close to they original.