You Can't Innovate Like Apple

http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/6/4/you_cant_innovate_like_apple

by davidedicillo • 16 years ago

117 69 16 years ago

Before starting my company, I worked as a product manager for a good 10 years and few other things after that. Truths like the Henry Ford quote: "If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’" are good and true but as this article points out, there is only room for one Apple and one Ford at any one time or any one industry. The rest of us have to be pragmatic and consider product innovation as something that's very central and very interdependent with all other aspects of a company's strategy and tactics (people, technology, customers, capital, competition, etc.).

ladon86• 16 years ago

Can you elaborate further on why there is only room for one company of this type in any one industry? I am struggling to see why that would be the case.

yardie2• 16 years ago

I've actually heard the same for fashion. There is usually one fashion house that basically dictates style for a few years. All other highend designers are basically lockstep behind this and then it trickles down through ready to wear, and finally consumer brands (like H&M).

You also see this in consumer electronics where bezels alternate between glossy black, flat black, silver, gold, white. If you go back further you'll find woodgrain, yellows, greens, etc. But it would never be one manufacturer. They all did it around the same time.

Today, Apple has decided a keyboard isn't necessary on a smartphone. 3 years ago that wasn't that case. Nintendo has decided that motion was how to play games. 3 years ago that wasn't the case. Ford decided that 4 wheels on a chassis is what makes a car. Why not 3 wheels, 5 wheels, or 6 wheels?

The market likes to be given new options, but not too many options. People are willing to take a chance but they won't accomadate everything. For now motion controllers are where it's at. Nintendo decided it, MS and Sony have to follow suit. In a few years it might be brainwave controllers. While those controllers exist they aren't marketable. The public isn't ready for it, yet.

melissamiranda• 16 years ago

Agree. Article quotes Apple as having just 20 designers who come up with the cool products. Article also says they don't do market research. This makes sense- 20 people come up with amazing ideas on their own (easy to reach consensus), and then I'm sure test prototypes in front of users. (They must get their products in front of users, even if it's a small set of users).

Contrast to Microsoft, which has competitive designers and programmers working in silos, vying for their little feature to win real estate on one of their programs. No wonder everything is bloated. (Source: I heard this from MS employees when I worked a consulting project for them while at a well known design firm).

Here's an interesting post on how Apple's "benelovent monarchy" stacks against Android's crowdsourced approach. http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/crowdsourced-curation-reputati... Does Apple's innovation win in this case?

extension3• 16 years ago

I think there are plenty of companies that innovate like Apple, but none of them make hardware.

You can make a great piece of software with just a few programmers. But making a great gadget requires so many different specialized services and such a large scale operation that it's impossible to get everyone drinking the same kool-aid.

If DIY manufacturing ever takes off, that's when you will see Apple caliber products coming from other people (but you'll have to print them yourself).

andreyf2• 16 years ago

Do you really think we'll live to having a DIY manufacturing unit that builds me an iPhone 4?

asmithmd1• 16 years ago

I think it is closer than you think. It won't be in your home but there will be shops like a Kinkos where you can send a design and pick-up any number of finished products. Check out these people who will turn a design into finished boards in just a few days:

http://www.screamingcircuits.com/

There are probably a dozen companies like them right now, I would guess it will be less than 5 years until there is one in every town.

mechanical_fish• 16 years ago

This is a fascinating hypothesis but I predict a big caveat: Much of Apple's quality derives from standardization. Everyone with an iPhone 4 has the same iPhone 4. You can design a case, a bicycle mount, a Twitter client or a learn-to-juggle app for the iPhone 4 and know that everyone will have the same experience.

Consider the world of free software, for example, where we have DIY manufacturing. Everyone can write their own Drupal, Wordpress, or Rails. But the market is not moving toward such bespoke products. Quite the opposite: customers want something that is based on customizations -- as minor as possible -- of a standard product.

Part of the problem, actually, is that you underestimate the effort of design. When you can turn a blueprint into hardware overnight, you'll still have to sweat over every line of that blueprint, and document it, and support it.

extension3• 16 years ago

A standard design can be done by one person and printed by millions. That's the theory anyway.

Perhaps a more realistic scenario is that cheap manufacturing tech reduces the barrier to entry enough that small startups can mass produce affordable gadgets, without contracting everything out.

danfitch• 16 years ago

If this is true then how did ping and the new iTunes icon make it past the 10-3-1. I am joking but not everything is perfect. Just not sure how those two slipped through.

CamperBob• 16 years ago

Exactly. He says, "Quick, identify 10 different pieces of technology that truly meet your needs and that don’t bug you due to a major flaw you either have to live with or compensate for in some fashion. Could you come up with more than five? I didn’t think so," as if Apple's strategy is to land on that list.

I use and enjoy my share of Apple's wares, but even if I could come up with 10 different pieces of technology that never piss me off, none of them would be from Apple. Has this guy ever used iTunes, or dealt with the App Store?

bad_user• 16 years ago

I am not enthusiastic about the App Store as a developer, but as a user I'm pretty happy as it is the best app store I've seen judging by the quality and number of the apps available.

Surely I'm seeing Android taking over just because it will sell more devices, but the Android Marketplace is really shitty ... I can't even sell or buy apps for Christ's sake, as my country is not on their list (I can do both from the App Store).

And you would think Google has experience in building web services.

So the iTunes App Store may be painful with lots of restrictions and cursed with an awful workflow for publishing apps, but at least it works.

lovskogen2• 16 years ago

I would argue that the iTunes and App Store experience is by far the best from a user perspective. From a hacker perspective... I don't know. But I think regular computer users are more than happy with iTunes and App Store. The ease of the App Store plays a good part in how sucessful apps has become.

lovskogen2• 16 years ago

Yeah, the new iTunes icon and the new Remote for iOS icon doesn't seem up to par with Apples aesthetics. Maybe they've gotten a new design lead that took those decisions.

manish• 16 years ago

This was there on HN 6 months back. More discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280304.

skeletonjelly2• 16 years ago

Lorem Ipsum is Greek huh? How can I read the rest of the article without vexation knowing that the writer can't identify a simple foreign language and a prolific tool of design?

defen• 16 years ago

Maybe he meant it in the "it's all Greek to me" sense.

ubernostrum• 16 years ago

"Greek text" is a bit of industry jargon for placeholder text such as... lorem ipsum.

Angostura• 16 years ago

It has different meanings in different sectors. Typical in desktop publishing tools, such as Xpress and InDesign, 'greeking' occurs when actual representation of letters is replaced by a stylised texture patterns. Usually this occurs at font sizes or zoom levels where it is impractical to accurately render the type on screen.

I must admit that after 20 years in publishing, I've never heard of Ipsum Lorem described as 'greek text', but I'm sure it is possible.

msbarnett• 16 years ago

"Greek" is the correct design term for any dummy text in a mock-up.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeking

skeletonjelly2• 16 years ago

No way. I would have called it Latining! Don't I feel like an idiot.

brown9-22• 16 years ago

Read that again, the articles author is quoting someone else making that statement.

aditya• 16 years ago

"Apple wraps great ideas inside great ideas", reminds me of JJ Abrams Mystery Box idea at TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html

thought_alarm2• 16 years ago

I'm reminded of the story of NUMMI [1], the American automobile plant that was a 1980s joint venture between GM and Toyota. (It was covered in an episode of This American Life).

In a nutshell, the story of NUMMI involves American GM workers building Toyota-designed/GM-branded vehicles using Toyota's radically different manufacturing processes. The plant itself was a smashing success for GM; the plant achieved much higher quality and productivity than any of GMs traditional plants, and it gave GM valuable insight into their rival's manufacturing and design processes.

But this insight into Toyota's processes failed to transform GM because the GM corporate culture was so entrenched. It took the company the better part of 20 years to really adopt these changes they learned in 1984, as they continued to bleed market share to the Japanese.

The point of that story is that I believe the corporate culture of any large tech company is equally entrenched, and in my experience it's this corporate culture that utterly determines how a company's products are designed and produced.

So it really doesn't matter how Apple does things, it only matters that they're different and successful; their competitors will be completely unable to react or change. Every company is full of powerful employees who have worked their entire careers to get where they are, and they will fight tooth and nail to prevent losing their position over anything else. Do you think all those PMs at Microsoft are going anywhere?

So companies like Microsoft, Motorola, HP, Acer, Nokia, Sony, and Nintendo can only do what they've always done. And if you look at their products, that's exactly what they continue to do in the face of a radically changing landscape. That's why a Toyota or an Apple or a Google is so truly threatening to their entrenched competitors. They achieve dramatically better results by doing things differently.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI

masklinn4• 16 years ago

> So companies like Microsoft, Motorola, HP, Acer, Nokia, Sony, and Nintendo can only do what they've always done.

I'm not sure Nintendo fits well in this list. They have seemed pretty willing to "take risks" (in a controlled way) and do things differently in recent years (since 2002~2003 and the start of the DS project, though they weren't initially as bold with it as they could have been, calling it a "third pillar" alongside the GBA and the GC, which we now know was utter bullshit)

pmjordan• 16 years ago

Nintendo also have "only" just over 4000 employees, which makes them 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than the other companies listed, except Acer. I'm not sure Acer has ever been known for innovation, though, whereas the others kind of "lost it".

In any case, at that size it's probably a lot easier to make drastic changes than when you have 100000 employees. I'd be interested what the lowest number of employees was that Apple has had since Jobs's return, and how big NeXT was compared to Apple at the time of or shortly after acquisition (in terms of headcount).

thought_alarm2• 16 years ago

    > I'm not sure Nintendo fits well in this list.

I think Nintendo is a great example.

The GameCube was clobbered by the PS2. How did Nintendo respond? Not by trying to be more like Sony but by being more like Nintendo. The point is that it's very difficult change corporate culture, for better or worse.

wazoox2• 16 years ago

Just to make it clear : Nintendo really got back to its roots, the Gunpei Yokoi philosophy, after the departure of its old CEO. Before Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo was making playing cards; he conceived the first nintendo toys (Ultra hand, Ultra machine...) in the 60s, the first Nintendo electronic toys (Love tester, Light gunner ... ) in the 70s, the first Nintendo arcade systems, the Game & Watch concept in the 80s, the Game Boy, the Virtual Boy...

Gunpei Yokoi repeatedly revolutionized markets by recycling well-known technology. For instance the GameBoy went out after the Game Gear. It was obviously inferior technically : black and white, no backlight. However it crushed the competition by providing what was previously oversight : excellent battery life.

jakevoytko• 16 years ago

The "This American Life" piece on the NUMMI factory was great, and triple-underlined a few points in the article, especially the importance of having a unified vision, and getting all decision-makers on board.

According to the piece, the major difference between the Japanese and American production methods involved flagging defects. If an American stopped the line for anything, they would be fired. So cars rolled down the line with fatal defects, needing either expensive repairs or a trip to the trash heap. On the other hand, Japanese workers were encouraged to stop the line for any flaws they saw. This limited the loss to individual parts and components, rather than entire automobiles. This sounds like Apple's 10->3->1 approach: design flaws are discarded as soon as possible.

The piece also asserted that GM failed to adopt these measures for two reasons: upper management deferred to individual plant managers for the practices to be used in each factory, and the plant managers preferred the don't-stop-the-line approach, since they already knew it. There was no Apple-like process in place to convince plant managers that they needed to switch their methods, so they never did.

mmorris• 16 years ago

Slightly off-topic, but interesting - Tesla bought the NUMMI plant this year at a huge discount. They plan to build the Model S there, and owning a factory was a requirement of Tesla receiving the $465 million government loan they got.

According to Wired, the plant had been recently valued at nearly $1 billion, but Tesla was able to purchase it for $42 million (it was being shut down because of the recession and after GM pulled out).

Sometimes it's about more than just innovation.

sundae79• 16 years ago

The companies that you listed in the last paragraph, did do things differently at one point in their history. Now they have become bloated. What makes you say toyota, apple, and google will remain exactly where they are in 15 years.

ody4• 16 years ago

"Apple designs for #2. No other mass-consumer products company puts as much attention to detail into the fit and finish of the box—let alone the out-of-box experience."

I'm sorry but no they do not put as much attention to detail into their products as you would think. They didn't even have multitasking in the iPhone until recently! And what was the antenna problems all about?

All I see is just enough attention to detail to make people go "wow, shiney." and that's it.

eitland• 16 years ago

This actually holds true for Macbooks/Mac OS X as well. I've been using a MBP for over a year now, and "attention to detail" is hardly the first words that comes to my mind.

A few examples:

* Different shortcuts in different programs.

* "Home"( * ) and "End"( * ) mapped to different key combinations in different programs. (No, not just 3rd party apps, apple apps too.)

* Holds true for hardware, too: ctrl is positioned differently on small and full size keyboards.

( * ) Of course, there are no home and end, but one of <fn>+<arrow key>, or <cmd>+<arrow key> or <ctrl>+<arrow key> will usually work. The only text movement combination that works almost in all apps are <alt>+<arrow key> which jumps by words. Of course, being unix, <ctrl>+a and <ctrl>+e works everywhere (?) but they can't be used together with <shift>

jscore• 16 years ago

I'd say 99% of Apple's target market were fine without multitasking plus it's a nice battery saver.

And this is coming from a hardcore Android fan with a Nexus One.

trustfundbaby• 16 years ago

> I'd say 99% of Apple's target market were fine without multitasking plus it's a nice battery

I disagree. I think they put up with not having it believing it would come soon, or didn't realize how bad not having it would be (I know that last one describes me).

steveklabnik3• 16 years ago

I'd actually argue the opposite; Apple pays so much attention to detail that they figured out that multitasking isn't really important, so they could just do it later. Copy and paste is awkward, it isn't absolutely necessary, they could just do it later.

Even the antenna thing: only the tech press knows anything about this. Apple said that just under 2% of people returned an iPhone 4. During that whole scandal, I asked my friends that haven't ever heard of HN, "What do you think about the iPhone 4 antenna problems?" and they had no idea what I was talking about. Even among those of my friends that have iPhone 4s, only 2 out of 5 even had the issue at all, and lately, my Nexus One's antenna has been acting up...

Apple is good at making MVPs, and then improving upon them. Eventually.

ody4• 16 years ago

2 out of 5 is a really big issue and a massive lack of attention to detail. I really don't see how you could think otherwise.

ody4• 16 years ago

Being a curious one, I had a look round your site as listed in your profile. You say have a Nexus One, yet your personal site, Watch.Steve, releases the tutorials in "iPhone + Apple TV" format and the filenames have iphone in there.

Just an observation ;-) Prompted mainly by the strange pointless dig at the Nexus One which had no relevance to the conversation or OP.

robgoodlatte• 16 years ago

Never tell me what I can't do.

cletus4• 16 years ago

To me, the most important part of this (great) post was that Apple doesn't do market research. It reminds me of a recent episode of Mad Men ("The Rejected", season 4, episode 4).

In this episode, the agency explores the idea of a cream being part of a beauty ritual rather than the traditional approach of linking beauty to matrimony. Near the end there was this exchange:

> Dr Miller: Well, turns out the hypothesis was rejected. I'd recommend a strategy that linked Ponds cold cream to matrimony... a veiled promise.

> Don Draper: A la 1925. I'm not going to do that. So... what are we going to tell the client?

> Dr Miller: I can't change the truth.

> Don Draper: How do you know that's the truth? A new idea is something they don't know yet so of course it's not going to come up as an option. Put my campaign on TV for a year then hold your group again. Maybe it'll show up.

To me this so succinctly sums up the disconnect between market research and the best products.

Take the iPad: I don't know why they decided to do a 10" tablet but I would bet money that they came up with several form factors then Steve Jobs walked into a room, picked one and said that's the one they're doing. This may be an oversimplification but I'm sure it's not far from the truth.

kenjackson6• 16 years ago

Market research is generally extremely difficult to do well. And for consumer products its less clear how useful it is. Most people use consuer products and Apple engineers/designers are probably fairly close to their target market, which are early adopters (others fall in line after early adopters).

And we should also be clear, Apple has tons of market data. These Apple stores I'm sure supply them tons of data, as an example. While they may not do targeted focus groups, I'm certain that they go into meetings where they say things like, "Verizon would expand our user base by x%, but likely add these additional costs".

cletus4• 16 years ago

The Verizon iPhone story is both my favourite and most hated tech story.

It's my most hated because I'm sick of hearing it. Every month it pops up.

It's my favourite because it's a classic example of rumourmongering becoming "news" perpetuated by people who don't really understand Apple at all.

See, it doesn't matter what % increase in revenue or market size Verizon would deliver to Apple, there is still one huge problem: CDMA technically doesn't support simultaneous voice and data. There is no getting around that (beyond the inevitable transition to LTE).

Anyone who thinks that Apple will release a CDMA version of the phone and then try to explain to consumers that version A can do this but version B can't is, well, off their rocker.

A CDMA iPad however is a completely different matter, but I digress...

Just like Apple could make more money--at least in the short term--by releasing a new phone more often than every year. The fact is though that people don't like the instant obsolescence of tech products. You buy an iPhone 4 today and you know it's as good as an iPhone will get til mid next year.

Compare that to the anarchic shotgun world of Android handsets.

Apple is driven by product and user experience not market research ("market data" isn't quite the same thing).

brown9-22• 16 years ago

One interesting thing about the idea that most companies can't be like Apple because their super-focused design attitude is risky and costly is: how did Apple get here? If it's so hard for a company to bootstrap themselves into this philosophy (and get large while doing it), how did Apple pull it off?

If my understanding of history is correct, it took a few failures and a dark period of non-success. Perhaps there is an additional lesson in there about recovering from failure and turning unsuccessful enterprises around.

On a related note, can anyone recommend a good book about Apple's history and particularily the story of how Steve Jobs turned the ship around when he returned? I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of interesting stories in that history which probably haven't been widely disclosed.

kenjackson6• 16 years ago

Absolutely. The biggest factor in Apple's current success is their past failure. Apple's willingness to completely redo their OS is a result of their OS struggling, both in the market and technologically.

The other thing that their failure also helped solidify is their base. Being the perpetual underdog they had a very strong enthusiastic core fan base. This allows them to get decent sales on even their worst sellings products. And for products with public displays (think iPod and iPhone) it helps them create early viral marketing. This base is much less effective for non-publicly displayed items (think their new touchpad or AppleTV).

I think these two things have allowed Apple to do bolder moves, yet actually have less risk associated with it.

The only other tech company I could think of that would have been able to do something similar was Commodore. But they self-imploded before publicly displayed technology devices were very viable.

gmlk• 16 years ago

It reminded me of something Knuth once wrote: "Judge an artist not by the quality of what is hanging on the walls, but by the quality of what's in the wastebasket"

secretasiandan• 16 years ago

While their culture might be necessary, its not sufficient.

You also need the high end of the market with its fat profit margins to support the cost of maintaining that culture.

ritusjain• 16 years ago

The reason Apple was successful at coming back from the dark period is because of Steve Jobs. Here is my question. Is it more important to have a CEO that has an innovative vision or is it more important to have a employee base thats is innovative?

And I would argue that the former is the crucial sauce for success... which makes it hard to be sustainable...

You Can't Innovate Like Apple

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