16
Combining the Genes
16.1. Taking stock of a flat list of genes
Throughout this book, it appeared that Apple had very much acquired a deeper thinking about business. We begin by gathering the genes, in view of first making a summary. Appendix 1 provides the list of acquired genes. Here it is for convenience.
| Gene AAPL001 – Accept risk, turn it into opportunity. | If you do not accept risk, then keep away from any business. |
| Gene AAPL002 – Have Chuztpah. | Excellence in management requires Chutzpah. |
| Gene AAPL003 – Product is more than product. | The design team’s objective is to come up with an “insanely great” product. |
| Gene AAPL004 – Turn essentials inside out. | Removing what is unnecessary is more valuable than blindly stacking functionality. |
| Gene AAPL005 – Product existence is by using it. | Enhancing customer experience rather than the spec sheet. |
| Gene AAPL006 – Always keep the end in sight. | Polarize all developments by working toward an aim. |
| Gene AAPL007 – Be your own judge. | The best approach to come up with an “insanely great” product for designers is to realize the product they would have liked to buy. |
| Gene AAPL008 – Impose strategic rhythm to markets. | Do not become a “me-too” supplier. Anything you launch should be strategic. |
| Gene AAPL009 – Aim for the top. | By thinking from the top, you let others consolidate your basis – from below. |
| Gene AAPL010 – Anticipate. | A lower position can no longer be overcome through frontal assault on the same battleground, rather by skating where the puck is going to be. |
| Gene AAPL011 – Select your fights. | This strategy requires patience, as the puck may move slowly. |
| Gene AAPL012 – See the new in the old. | A new category is formed out of blurring the divisions between old ones. |
| Gene AAPL013 – Practice perseverance. | Success requires perseverance. Not to be confused with stubbornness. |
| Gene AAPL014 – Failure today breeds tomorrow’s success. | Recognizing a failure is a tough act for a leader. Arguably, it is the only way to make progress. |
| Gene AAPL015 – R&D is a means, not an end. | The product roadmap drives the entire R&D effort. |
| Gene AAPL016 – Decouple R&D spending from innovation spending. | Technology change management includes an acquisition policy which must outrun competitors. |
| Gene AAPL017 – Acquire the right company at the right time. | Technology change management includes an acquisition policy which must outrun the competitors. |
| Gene AAPL018 – Software is a powerful force. | Software pushes other technology types around; therefore balances power within enterprises. |
| Gene AAPL019 – Software differentiates. | Regard software as a differentiating factor, not as a commodity. |
| Gene AAPL020 – Software is different development. | Software development presents a fundamental management issue. A modern manager must understand software specificities. |
| Gene AAPL021 – Respect software status and software people. | Good software cannot be built on top of software that people hold in contempt. |
| Gene AAPL022 –Software process. | Mastering the software development process is not in contradiction with hiring exceptional, off-the-scale talent. |
| Gene AAPL023 – Reveal markets indirectly. | Use that terrible failure as bait revealing “truer market”. |
| Gene AAPL024 – A good idea requires the right timing. | Bad timing does not imply a bad idea. A good idea must wait until the time comes for it. |
| Gene AAPL025 – Blend form and function. | As a medium is a message, a form factor carries meaning, but it should be aligned with content, i.e. function. |
| Gene AAPL026 – Meaning is everything. | A form factor that is not balanced with function relegated to decoration. |
| Gene AAPL027 – Top management must take charge in consumer markets. | In the consumer goods market – whatever the size – top level management is the front line when it comes to products. |
When analyzing the above list, we can observe two recurrent characteristics: Apple breaks the classical notions of competing and innovating.
- – Evolving competition. The depolarization from the classical views about competition. It all seems as if Apple had mastered an art of escaping the dualism inherent in fighting competition. In fact, it does not fight competitors as if they were enemies. It opens new strategic market spaces and even appears to turn its back on competition. It actually repolarizes competition by offering it a new vision, on which it sooner or later embarks (because of the lure of profit to be made in these new markets). But with a supreme differentiating factor: it establishes a value gap and solidly maintains it. In conclusion, Apple has evolved the notion of competition by stirring it from a leading position.
- – Evolving innovation. In the innovation game, it is not R&D that opens the way. It is a combination of vision, market opportunities, and technology, plus a capacity to extract all the juice from their connection. It is a multidimensional approach.
Let us recall the table issues at beginning of Part 1 in a more synthetic way. By matching the nine topical domains of interest which made up Part 1 with the above two synthetic characteristics, we obtain the following:
Table 16.2. Relevance to the two synthetic characteristics of innovation and competitiveness
| Topical domain of gapping interest (and the underpinning key business issue) | Higher relevance to innovation capability | Higher relevance to competitive capability |
| Risk taking (uncertainty) | Yes | Yes |
| Product design (products) | Yes | – |
| Market studies (markets) | – | Yes |
| Giving up some fights (competition) | – | Yes |
| Entering new markets (leadership) | – | Yes |
| Apple, the learning company (skills and talents) | Yes | – |
| On R&D | Yes | – |
| On company acquisition (external growth) | Yes | Yes |
| Managing software development (software versus hardware) | Yes | Yes |
Which translates into the following table, which represents the knowledge base:
Table 16.3. The root knowledge base. Each cell contains a wealth of knowledge, both traditional (e.g. business schools) and Apple-made
| What relates more to innovation | What relates more to competition | What equally relates to both |
| Product design | Market studies | Risk-taking |
| Skills and talents | Competitive fights | Company acquisition |
| R&D | Entering new markets | Managing software/hardware |
16.2. Setting the stage toward a combined dynamics
By attempting to summarize the traditional thinking in competitiveness – in other words searching for the dominant designs found in the notion of competitiveness first, and “innovativeness” second, we will gradually proceed toward a genuine synthesis of the genes. For this, we use the design methodology based on C-K theory (see Appendix 3 for an example).
16.2.1. In search for dominant designs
To begin with, what is in a dominant design (DD)? A DD is relative to the way a given business domain of activity is organized and reflects the accumulated habits of the sector. It expresses the credos which all players abide by: the modes of operating, of competing, of innovating, etc. Often they take the form of dogmas, as the inception moments which originated a given dominant design have been lost, being likely undocumented and sometimes belonging to a previous generation of workers.
By looking at the gene list, we detect two immediate dominant designs pertaining to competitiveness:
C-DD1: “Competing in dualistic environments.”
This DD is a way to signify face to face competing by differentiating and specializing. A traditional view which business schools have long propagated.
C-DD2: “Growing dimensionally.”
This DD expresses the predominant of growth in either size, product line (diversification of the products catalog) or market volumes (which may translate into market shares). Another traditional view which business schools have long advocated, across the firms spectrum from startups to giant corporations.
The same effort will be made for “innovativeness”:
I-DD1: “Innovating within one’s core business.”
This DD expresses the coring on the business sectors in which a firm is already established. The rationale is evident: to stabilize a business position and take up arms for competition with a clear edge.
I-DD2: “Innovating within one’s core competencies.”
This DD expresses the capitalizing on the firm’s inner best assets. Indeed, traditional views advise exploiting the accumulated skills. The rationale behind says that a firm competes well only where it is best at.
There are many more dominant designs at work in any established business field, as these grow and mature. For the sake of simplicity and brevity, we only focus on the above and process our methodology forward.
16.2.2. Breaking the dominant designs
To open up new avenues of innovation, we break the rule nested in each above dominant design. Which leads to defining breaking axes for the four DDs found above:
This axis is an obvious translation of the first dominant design.
This axis focuses on combining blending several growth directions at once.
This axis is an immediate rephrasing of the corresponding dominant design.
This axis targets the capacity to evolve skills and talents, competencies and know-how. Not to carry them over through time necessarily, a sort of accumulation or sedimentation of competencies (hence the breaking effect searched), but instead to refresh them according to the needs (of market, of industry, whatever).
At this stage, we don’t try to validate the above expressions: these are “crazy” directions for entering straight unknown zones. The breaking axes assert directions without knowing if they may be feasible or not.
16.2.3. Blueprinting radical “crazy” concepts
It is now time to formulate a few working expressions in the form of undecidable root concepts C0 in order to satisfactorily operate C-K theory. These can be reformulating the breaking axes defined above. As an example:
We will briefly develop these two concepts through a simplified C-K diagram. The end purpose is to obtain “formulas” that can be taken by third organizations as a quintessence of an Apple DNA. These formulas are meant to be replicable and adaptable to target business contexts. There will not be an estimation of the possible cost of adoption for internalizing the resulting formulas as cultural projects within a firm as this falls beyond the scope of this book. Nor is there an attempt, and for the same reason, in developing deeper and wider C-K diagrams.
We only show here a few ideas for food not to make the discussion too heavy. The C-K diagrams can be developed much further in the same line; here only the first expansions and a few main findings are shown. We believe it is enough for the clear enough understanding of the approach.
A C-K diagram shows the technique of expansion performed in the conceptual space C (left in the diagram) from the initial knowledge base in the K space (right in the diagram). Remember that the knowledge base is primarily formed by Part 1 and Part 2 of this book and supplemented by the total relevantly accumulated knowledge (the latter which of course is developed elsewhere, e.g. in books and university or professional trainings of all sorts). It is dubbed to be the sum of “business school knowledge” and “Apple knowledge” since it was drawn from discussing nine basic thematic domains of business activity, both “à-la-traditional-business schools” and “à-la-Apple".
A more detailed discussion of the process, which may sometimes result delicate, is offered in Appendix 3. Please refer to this background material, and the specific references attached therein, for any desired further investigation.