Apple’s Secret Sauce

Is Your Com­pany an Apple Wannabe?

These days it’s cool for com­pa­nies to want to emu­late Apple. But it’s harder than it looks.

Many arti­cles and case stud­ies have been writ­ten in an attempt to illu­mi­nate the secrets behind Apple’s con­tin­u­ing suc­cess. Pun­dits pon­tif­i­cate about Apple’s “secret sauce.” CEOs tell the troops to “get cre­ative — inno­vate like Apple.”

So what’s behind this quest to imi­tate Apple? Mass media’s 25-year love affair with Apple? Apple’s stock per­for­mance? Its brand cachet? Ubiq­ui­tous  iPods, iPhones and white ear buds? C-level execs want­ing global celebrity sta­tus like that of Steve Jobs or for­mer Apple exec Guy Kawasaki? Today’s fad of Pow­er­Point bash­ing? The pur­suit of cool?

I’m amazed at how often the “Apple wannabe phe­nom­e­non” crops up in the media, client engage­ments, cock­tail con­ver­sa­tions, and so on. I’m equally amazed at how unre­al­is­tic peo­ple are about what it takes to behave like Apple.

It’s Not Easy to Be Cool

From what I’ve seen, most busi­ness lead­ers’ desire to emu­late Apple is wish­ful think­ing. Their dreams can­not be real­ized because they are not sup­ported by:

• a clear strate­gic intent linked to a dis­ci­plined, spe­cific and action­able plan
• a favor­able cor­po­rate culture
• a will­ing­ness to invest in change man­age­ment to get from today’s pedes­trian real­ity (what­ever that might be) to Apple-like coolness
• holis­tic prod­uct plan­ning that pro­ceeds from the iden­ti­fied cus­tomers’ desired expe­ri­ence goals as a non-negotiable start­ing point
• or any real under­stand­ing of what’s required to embrace design as a strate­gic pil­lar of the essen­tial corporate/brand strategy.

I call this the “CEO free lunch syn­drome” — mean­ing they want it, but don’t have any inten­tion of pay­ing for it. Just like the myth­i­cal free lunch, execs who pur­sue this course are unlikely to make any real progress on their quest to emu­late what’s best about Apple.

Embrac­ing your “inner Apple.” It’s not just a ques­tion of hir­ing some bril­liant inter­ac­tion design­ers, award-winning agen­cies,  indus­trial design­ers or design strate­gists. Dress­ing in black turtle­necks and jeans; or drop­ping Pow­er­Point in favor of Apple Keynote and a slav­ish adher­ence to the prin­ci­ples of  “pre­sen­ta­tion zen.”

It’s Gotta Be Baked In — Part of Cor­po­rate DNA

My per­spec­tives on Apple are based on a long his­tory of work­ing together in a vari­ety of roles: employee, part­ner, cus­tomer,  ser­vice provider, and for­mer shareholder.

So what does this per­spec­tive tell me?

It’s Hard to Imi­tate Apple

Apple’s com­pet­i­tive posi­tion­ing and brand asso­ci­a­tions are based on tough-to-emulate qual­i­ties that take years to put into prac­tice. Things like:

• employee indoc­tri­na­tion, on-boarding, cor­po­rate val­ues — a cor­po­rate mantra — and cult-like objects to inspire devo­tion and rein­force commitment
• management-backed val­ues and recog­ni­tion sys­tems that sup­port and rein­force behav­ior on the part of every employee to be con­sis­tent with cor­po­rate brand principles
• hir­ing and reten­tion prac­tices that attract and keep the right peo­ple on board (or within reach of Apple’s influ­ence ecosystem)
• a cul­ture that actively dis­cour­ages medi­oc­rity, cel­e­brates heroic actions, and rewards risk tak­ing with­out unduly pun­ish­ing fast fail­ures (as long as the mis­takes lead to fast learning)

It’s Expen­sive to Imi­tate Apple

Even if you ignore Apple’s invest­ment in highly designed and world-class ads, col­lat­eral, web pres­ence — or “prod­uct as hero” pho­tos that romance the brand (I’ve heard they spend upwards of $100K on the iconic pho­tographs that will appear every­where.) — Apple is com­mit­ted to a highly dis­ci­plined approach that’s almost impos­si­ble to imi­tate. For example:

• an obses­sive atten­tion to detail, qual­ity work­man­ship, and design prin­ci­ples focused on just the essen­tials (see story below)
• “tough love” crit­i­cism to pre­vent medi­oc­rity, or good-enough-but-not-great ideas and prod­ucts from creep­ing into the prod­uct or brand portfolio
• ruth­less will­ing­ness to prune the prod­uct port­fo­lio to just the right set of prod­ucts and offers (no more SKU creep)
• will­ing­ness to delay prod­uct ship dates (or increase last-minute devel­op­ment costs) to ensure that new prod­ucts adhere to design stan­dards and Apple brand prin­ci­ples — no compromise
• a web pres­ence and design phi­los­o­phy that are so con­sis­tent you’d rec­og­nize them as com­ing from Apple even if the name and logos were removed
• will­ing­ness to vest deci­sion mak­ing author­ity in a small num­ber of design czars (or even a design dic­ta­tor like Steve Jobs), rather than com­pro­mise the clar­ity of the design vision by try­ing to reach con­sen­sus across a broad constituency
• will­ing­ness and abil­ity to develop design per­sonas, sup­port­ing use cases and experience/interaction designs that will ensure cus­tomer delight — tac­tics that deliver on the strategy

Here are a few sto­ries to illus­trate my points.

Some Sto­ries

The Cult of Apple & Inter­nal evangelism

When I worked there, indoc­tri­na­tion into the cult of Apple began on Day One, with an all-day ori­en­ta­tion that cel­e­brated the myths and leg­ends of the then-young com­pany. (Even back then I won­dered if I were get­ting brain­washed…) Through­out my 5 years as an employee, we were show­ered with tchotchkes, war sto­ries, pre­sen­ta­tions, inter­nal pub­li­ca­tions and arti­facts that rein­forced brand val­ues and design principles.

Besides the offi­cial cor­po­rate val­ues, there were “words to live by” and cor­po­rate mantras. Things like:

“The jour­ney is the reward.

And:

“Apple will change the way peo­ple work, learn, live and play.

We rein­forced these beliefs and val­ues in every­thing we did, cel­e­brated, talked about — or evan­ge­lized to part­ners and other stakeholders.

It’s the only employee badge I’ve never thrown away.

Exter­nal Evangelism

Guy Kawasaki became famous after pub­lish­ing the ideas he pio­neered while lead­ing Apple’s exter­nally fac­ing “Evan­ge­lism” team — a prac­tice that Microsoft later bor­rowed? stole? “embraced and extended?” from Apple. Apple actively pro­mul­gated its beliefs and val­ues, and required adher­ence from any part­ner whose offer­ing would com­plete the value propo­si­tion to be deliv­ered to the end-customer. (When I was there, this was a con­di­tion of par­tic­i­pa­tion in joint cam­paigns and promotions.)

More recently, I’ve heard sto­ries from friends and fam­ily mem­bers who worked for AT&T dur­ing the launch and roll-out of Apple’s iPhone on the AT&T  net­work. To say there was cul­ture clash between the two com­pa­nies would be an under­state­ment (based on the war sto­ries I’ve heard via the local grapevine).

A major source of fric­tion was Apple’s relent­less insis­tence on own­ing the consumer’s online expe­ri­ence: peo­ple acti­vat­ing their first iPhone, or trans­fer­ring their mobile num­ber from another car­rier. Apple didn’t want this step — a crit­i­cal first impres­sion — to be just another same-old/same-old AT&T acti­va­tion expe­ri­ence. The prob­lem for AT&T was that Apple’s desired online expe­ri­ence didn’t mesh nicely with the legacy back-end sys­tems that got con­sumers up and run­ning on AT&T’s sub­scriber net­work. Even so, despite enor­mous tech­ni­cal and scal­a­bil­ity chal­lenges, Apple prevailed.

The Design Czar

Most peo­ple have heard or read sto­ries about Steve Jobs’ direct and hands-on involve­ment in customer-facing design deci­sions. But I’ve heard a story that’s really telling: his obses­sive atten­tion to design detail even for things that are “under the hood,” less likely to be vis­i­ble to the casual observer or prod­uct reviewer.

I heard this story from a design prin­ci­pal for a Bay Area firm, who was in the room with Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ivey when this event occurred.

Apple was near­ing design com­ple­tion for one of its high-end Mac pow­er­houses — the expand­able sil­ver tower com­put­ers that are pur­chased by Hol­ly­wood stu­dios, ani­ma­tors, design pro­fes­sion­als, game devel­op­ers, and Apple enthu­si­asts who aren’t bud­get constrained.

Accord­ing to my source, Steve opened up the cover, looked at the board lay­outs and the design of the expan­sion chas­sis, and announced they weren’t good enough. He insisted that what was under the cover had to be just as beau­ti­ful (and func­tion­ally ele­gant) as what appeared on the out­side of the prod­uct. Ease of use and design ele­gance – as applied to ease of main­te­nance by the Mac owner — had to match Apple’s vaunted UI stan­dards for soft­ware usabil­ity. The design execs were sent back to their teams, and told to get it right. Apple delayed the prod­uct launch until the design prin­ci­ples and qual­ity stan­dards were achieved.

There’s a sim­i­lar story about a last-minute design deci­sion to replace the glass on the first iPhone to ensure it would be best-in-class, opti­cal quality.

A related story — learn­ing from design archetypes:

When I was work­ing for Apple in the early days, one of Apple’s build­ings on Mar­i­ani Drive proudly fea­tured a black BMW motor­cy­cle and a Bosendor­fer piano in its main lobby. Why? They were held up as the design exem­plars — illus­trat­ing the per­fect bal­ance between form and func­tion. We all knew what they represented.

My Apple Credentials

Start­ing in 1983:

• part­ner­ing with Apple to develop and pro­mote soft­ware solu­tions for Apple II, III, Lisa and Mac 128K (Visi­Corp — 2⁺ years)
• play­ing a key role on the early Mac­in­tosh busi­ness mar­ket­ing team in Cuper­tino (Apple employee – 5 years)
• part­ner­ing with Apple to fur­ther the fran­chise for creative/media professionals(Aldus/Adobe – 4 years)
• writ­ing an early (co-branded) white paper on the Inter­net that Apple pub­lished and dis­trib­uted around the world (1996, Inform­ing Arts)
• being a loyal Apple cus­tomer since 1990 or so, and a Mac user since 1984.

I can’t claim to have cur­rent insights into Apple’s oper­at­ing philoso­phies, but based on their observ­able behav­ior, I doubt they have mate­ri­ally changed.

My final point: if you want to emu­late Apple, look below the sur­face and think care­fully about whether you’re will­ing and able to com­mit to the required trans­for­ma­tion. Let alone, fund it.

Tagged as: Apple, Brand Strategy, creativity, design strategy, innovation

Revised on April 15, 2011