Simplification

Simplification of the products

According to “the Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs”,

the core of his marketing strategy can be summarized one word, “simplicity.”

Jobs claimed that he focused on what the customers really need, such as basic functions. In his words, it is described as saying “no” to 1,000 things.

Actually, most of the users of Apple products say that they like Apple because it seems easy to use, and simple to operate. Jobs intentionally designed the product with the idea of simplicity. In fact, he did not invent any specific systems, but what he did is combination of existing technologies into the new form of system with a notion of simplicity.

For the user perspective, they can shift to the Apple products from their current products, which often suffer them to operate. So far, this strategy is working represented by Apple’s success.

 

The Innovator’s Dilemma

“In Apple’s world, simplicity and focus are one and the same”, this quotation reminds me of the theory of C.Christensen “the Innovator’s Dilemma”.

The theory of Innovator’s Dilemma depicts how the market leaders fail to keep its share in the current industry. The leading companies tend to listen to variety of requests from customers, investors or executives. Those varieties make products more complicated, so that at some point they go beyond the customers’ actual needs. Here is the chance of ‘disruptive innovation.’ It has a chance to change the market share of its industry.

For example, why do you purchase CDs? Probably your answer is to listen to some specific music. Jobs created the platform of online tune store, “i-Tunes” so that you do not have to buy actual CDs anymore. Obviously for the music industry, what Jobs did is one of the disruptive innovations.

 

Simplification V.S High Technology

If you go to Best Buy, you can see many new brands such as Apple, Samsung. They used to be Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic…Those are Japanese manufacturing companies which have many high technologies. As it is described above, focusing on what the customers really need has been a great strategy for those years. Since I am interested in the change of industry, I have researched the current strategies of Japanese companies. What is surprising me is that those companies still developing the high technology products with the high price rate. Maybe their target is high income people who try to differentiate themselves from others.

So far, I cannot say which is correct or not. Just I can say the simplification is fitting the current economy. So I am going to observe what is going on this topic.