Steve Jobs and the Eureka Myth

Adrian Slywotzky at Harvard Business Review:

Apple would love us to believe it’s all “Eureka.” But Apple produces 10 pixel-perfect prototypes for each feature. They compete — and are winnowed down to three, then one, resulting in a highly evolved winner. Because Apple knows the more you compete inside, the less you’ll have to compete outside.

This is what I think when I see Samsung shipping five or six different sized tablets. It’s not that Apple didn’t try a bunch of different form factors — it’s that they tried them internally, figured out which one was best, and only shipped that one.

★ Sunday, 4 September 2011