I'll give you one example from the electronics industry: Solid State Drives. Of course, this technology was built on the shoulders of the IC industry and deca

I'll give you one example from the electronics industry: Solid State Drives. Of course, this technology was built on the shoulders of the IC industry and decades of hard-core research by individuals and companies. My friend's MacBook Pro has a SSD. She really likes the MacBook Pro because it boots fast (awesome!). Apple didn't invent the SSD, they weren't the first ones to put it in a product, but they were the first ones to put the product in my friend's hand. To her, Apple is a incredible innovator. So they didn't innovate the SSD, they just did a great job of integrated and selling. This illustrates my original points that Apple is "incredible at business; excellent at marketing; great at product design; mediocre at innovation;...great design and system integration"