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Clayton Christensen's theory has never applied all that well to Apple, and he admits this. Rather than say "Oh well, I guess this counterexample proves I was wr

• btilly 14y ago
  His attitude makes more sense if you've read the follow-up book, The Innovator's Solution, which describes the dynamics inside of companies facing this dilemma. However I think that he missed a bigger point. His theory is based on companies competing on a clear value proposition. But I cannot think of a single product where Apple under Jobs ever tried to compete on the same value proposition that its competitors were using. For instance consider the iMac. In theory it was a desktop computer, competing against a plethora of others. However it was the ONLY desktop computer that came in your choice of pretty colors. Competitors laughed, but people bought them. The Macbook had a very different look, but again was distinguished from competitors by its appearance. (The specs were similar to worse than direct competitors, the price was higher.) The iPod entered a market with established competitors, but was differentiated by its extreme design simplicity. The Macbook Air changed things up in a different way. You had another laptop, which was severely underpowered, left out expected features (like a DVD player), but offered extreme lightness before anyone else did. Whether we're talking about Apple's new product lines, or product lines that were in existing markets, there seems to always have been some unique value proposition which Apple offered that its competitors did not. I think that this fact is integral to its success.
  • glenra 14y ago
    Yes, Apple has often competed with better design and superior miniaturization. But how is this different from other firms? For instance, Sony has often tried to make things smaller and cooler-looking than competing products, from the WalkMan to the Vaio to the modern day. Few companies enter a market resolving "I'm going to just try to make exactly what other guys are making." (Well, okay, maybe Samsung does that.) No, the big difference is that Apple often succeeds when they try ambitious new designs, whereas Sony and HP and Microsoft usually fail when they try to do the same thing. I've always thought there was a large amount of self-fulfilling prophesy involved in this. Apple, like Tinkerbell, works primarily because we believe in it. If we stopped expecting it to succeed, it would stop succeeding. Suppose HP releases a product that seems really cool and potentially useful but has a few annoying flaws - the software doesn't work quite right. Few buy it, HP never fixes any of the flaws, HP discontinues production, and you find the abandoned product on the discount shelf at Fry's. Now suppose Apple does the same thing. Because it's Apple we know they're committed to fixing the initial obvious flaws. Developers and users see the potential in the new product, not just what it is but what it could be. People buy it. A rash of "early adopters" buy it practically sight unseen and then whine in blogs/newspapers/magazines about what Apple needs to do next to make it perfect. Apple takes the revenue they get from those early sales, considers the suggestions, and fixes the problems. The original buyers get a software patch; new buyers get version 2.0 that fixes the original problems and more. The first iPhone didn't have copy-paste and didn't allow third-party apps and didn't have an "app store". People bought it, and within a year or so it did have those features. Apple has a track record of sticking with it and improving their crazy stuff, so we trust them to fix problems, so they find it worthwhile to take bigger risks. [Minor nit: The first iMac only came in Bondi Blue. The choice of colors period came later, when it was already a hit.]