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Steve Jobs, 1983: the simplicity of Apple's strategy
Video
The Bittrue innovation gets ahead of what is possible today, and moves toward it by being first in line for when technology, consumer trends or regulation allow it.
"We design the computer we want to put in the book, even if it doesn't fit yet."
— Steve Jobs
In 1983, at 28, Steve Jobs explained Apple's strategy in under a minute. There was no laptop and no wireless connection, and Lisa, the machine they had just launched, cost ten thousand dollars.
Transcript of the video:
Apple's strategy is really simple. What we want to do is put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in twenty minutes. We don't know how to do that today. It's technically impossible. So we had three options:
1. Do nothing.
2. Put a garbage computer in a book. We can do that. But our competitors are already doing it, so we don't need to.
3. Design the computer we eventually want to put in the book, even if today it doesn't fit in the book.
Right now it fits in a breadbox, costs ten thousand dollars and it's called Lisa. The next thing we'll do is figure out how to put it in a shoebox and sell it for around twenty-five hundred dollars; that will be the next step. And finally we'll figure out how to put it in a book and sell it for under a thousand dollars.
Twenty years later that vision was called MacBook, then iPhone, then iPad. And achieving it meant building the company that became the most valuable in the world.
Jobs's great vision leaves very valuable lessons for any founder:
- The vision is described from the user, not from the technology. A book you carry and learn to use in twenty minutes. There isn't a single technical specification in the sentence.
- Faced with the impossible there are three options, and two of them aren't really options. Doing nothing leaves you out. Doing something mediocre because the competition does it makes you indistinguishable. The third is to design the end product and move toward it.
- A vision that clear and that valuable to the customer is what turns a brand into a cult, and every customer into an evangelist (see the MTP section of Exponential Organizations).
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How it helped me
In our experience, and of course very, very far from the league Jobs played in, we have a down-to-earth case along these lines. In 2016 the Sofipo (Sociedad Financiera Popular) charter was basically ignored by the market; we saw in it the perfect vehicle to create the savings product we wanted to have as investors ourselves: safe, high-yield and digitally operated. We knew that fully digital onboarding with no physical presence was a regulatory change that would have to happen someday, and we were very active in promoting it directly and through Amsofipo, the industry association. When it happened we were there, and we managed to grow at a pace that a couple of years earlier the sector's experts considered impossible. Of course, we didn't tell the customer any of those details; we spoke to their interest starting with the product's name: SuperTasas.com, "super rates" (now Crediclub Inversiones).
Killer quote: "Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been." — Wayne Gretzky