In Walter Isaacson's terrific new Steve Jobs biography, we find a description of the simple principles Mike Markkula outlined at Apple's inception. As my students know all too well, I love the concept that strategy is all about making trade-offs. As Michael Porter has said, "The essence of strategy is choosing what NOT to do." Take a look at principle #2 at Apple. From the firm's inception, its leaders understood the criticality of making trade-offs to create competitive advantage and build barriers to imitation. Here is an excerpt from the Isaacson's biography:
Markkula wrote his principles in a one-page paper titled “The Apple Marketing Philosophy” that stressed three points. The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: “We will truly understand their needs better than any other company.” The second was focus: “In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities.” The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. “People DO judge a book by its cover,” he wrote. “We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.
What an amazingly simple, but powerful statement of core principles. Every entrepreneur should take note!
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