HBR.
ORG
Interaction
Enter iPad
HBR blogs, April 2010
HBR.org covered the launch of
Apple’s much-hyped iPad from
the strategic, innovative, and
marketing perspectives, and our
online community buzzed with
commentary and complaints.
“Apple’s Strategic iParadox” by Umair
Haque. “The iPad is a revolution waiting
to happen. But the revolution’s biggest
roadblock is Apple itself.”
If everyone had an iPad and then someone
came out with the iPhone, it would be
regarded as an “iPad killer”—98% of the
same functionality but portable and a
phone, too. So when the chronology is
reversed, why does iPad win big? Who is
the core customer? And why?
Posted by Rodrigo Plantagenet
Apple has always been fundamentally
product-led; that’s how it generates real
value. It succeeds in a service-driven world
because services don’t produce quite
the same tangible value that fantastic
products do—and Apple produces
fantastic products better than anyone else.
Posted by Aditya Anupkumar,
Partner—Strategic Planning and Rediffusion,
Young & Rubicam
Somehow consultants have concluded that
the U.S. would be better off commoditizing
CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE
some focus on the application of testing
and on honing the skill of learning how
to listen to your gut. A combination of
experiment and intuition may prove to be
more valuable than expected.
Stuart M. Jackson, CEO,
Jackson & Associates
20 Harvard Business Review June 2010
1191 Jun10 Interaction Layout.indd 20
hardware and focusing on services. But
as the hardware moves offshore, so does
the competitive advantage, and eventually
services will be commoditized. It’s easy
to discount a service until it’s essentially
free; then it’s nearly impossible to raise
the price. Google did this with office
software, although it charges businesses
for access to its office suite. Facebook is
struggling with a business model that has
no subscription revenue, and it’s seeing a
revolt from subscribers who refuse to pay
for a social networking service.
Posted by Stevan Eidson, President,
Eizon
“Apple’s iPad: What Every Business
Can Learn” by Peter Merholz. “Apple is
surprisingly cavalier about supplanting an
existing cash cow with a next-generation
product that responds to how the market
is moving.”
Most companies are just not confident,
disciplined, or financially stable enough to
take the kinds of risks Apple can and does.
Better to innovate yourselves into a new
market than to miss one while a nimbler
competitor discovers the next PC.
Posted by Andrew McFarland, Vice President,
CA, Inc.
What also distinguishes Apple from other
technology companies is strict quality
control. It doesn’t waste its time or ours
with endless betas. We don’t need to
worry about model numbers and versions.
No company has exemplified “What you
see is what you get” better than Apple.
Posted by Vijay Kumar, Vice President of Finance,
Southwest Kidney Institute
“Waiting for the iPad’s Twist” by Scott
Anthony. “If there isn’t any twist, I
expect the iPad to...fall short of the
transformational impact of the iPod and
iPhone platforms.”
It’s not the iPad, it’s the category that
will fail should the killer app not show up.
Where the Kindle and the Nook took the
one-trick-pony approach, Apple has put all
the capabilities in the iPad that developers
and users now have to figure out how to
put into action. Although the Kindle solved
a problem, it did so without any open
expansion capabilities.
Posted by John McElhenney, Digital Producer,
Clarus Agency
“Where Most New Product Launches (But
Not Apple’s) Go Wrong” by Julia Kirby.
“Apple’s success isn’t all a story of building
a better mousetrap. It’s also about being
really good at making the world beat a
path to your door.”
A company that is planning a product
launch should ask not only “How can we
capture customers’ attention and whet
their appetites so as to maximize product
sales?” but also “How can we genuinely
improve things for the customer through
a better-planned launch?” The answer to
the first question is to generate mystique.
The answer to the second is to reach as
many customers as possible at launch
and ensure sufficient supply so that there
are no stockouts and customers can get
the product without hardship. Focusing
exclusively on the first is likely to result in
a manipulative launch rather than one that
PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES
genuinely meets customers’ needs. Apple’s
magic perhaps lies in its impeccable focus
on both.
Posted by V.P. Kochikar,
Associate Vice President,
Infosys Technologies
5/4/10 10:26:56 AM
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