Dirk Beckmann - What Would Apple Do?: How You Can Learn from Apple and Make Money

A ll received wisdom would say that theres no way Apple could be successful because it completely ignores conventional business practices. It serves a wide variety of different markets and operates in a proprietary, integrated technical world. The investment in R&D is mind-blowing. The employees develop innovations in interdisciplinary teams with an enormous amount of effort, but then go on to find fault after fault in their own ideas. All information about new products is kept top secret (and top secret means top secret) right up to the launch. When you think about how little Apple takes ordinary business principles to heart, you realise that any potential investor would normally refuse to give this firm a single dollar.

But Apple doesnt need investors, and its doing just fine without them. Since 1997, the company has been able to increase its stock value to a higher level than that of Google, Microsoft or Facebook. Since 2011, Apple has been the worlds most valuable company. With products such as iTunes, iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple not only makes an enormous profit, but has also opened up completely new markets.

The Apple system takes markets by storm and represents a combination of modernity, lifestyle and quality. However, the best bit for the company and its shareholders is this: Apple is making money. The company is profitable in every field.

So what makes Apple so successful? The answer used to be: the company is blessed with a charismatic boss who seems to succeed in everything he does. Someone whose keynote speeches are the inspiration for thousands of speakers. Someone who makes one ground-breaking decision after another.

But today we know that Apple is so much more than just Steve Jobs. Apple is a concept. A concept that is well worth learning from because it represents a company with a reputation for overcoming seemingly invincible obstacles to create great new things. A company that chases up seemingly crazy ideas and will not rest until it has put them into action, and which keeps finding new opportunities to make money in the digital world. Loads of money were talking (in early 2013) about $130 billion in cash.

So what makes Apple the greatest innovator in the digital world right now? How has this company, whose products are shunned by professional users as lifestyle gadgets, and often labelled as too expensive, come to be the most innovative of all technology brands? What have products such as the iPhone or the iPad got that sets them apart from their competitors? What did Apple do to become such a global phenomenon?

The way in which Apple takes business models from the analogue world and modifies them for todays digital world has become another important keystone of its success. It creates new markets using business models that were unthinkable in the old days: a perfect example of digital evolution from a businessmans point of view. The success of iTunes and the iPod was only possible because Apple threw out well-worn mindsets, concentrating instead on putting a brand new business model into action.

While the music industry completely failed to anticipate the digital revolution, Apple decided to talk with the record labels about developing a digital sales system for music. Lengthy discussions and a great deal of persuasion were necessary. But it worked, and today the labels generate a significant share of their income through the worlds largest music vendor Apple. The legal and technical barriers appeared insurmountable and scared everyone else off from even trying to move in the direction that Apple was taking. No one believed that customers would ever go back to paying for something that was available for free and only a few clicks away. Before iTunes, it was practically impossible to purchase music legally from the Internet. Yet today the quick-and- easy-to-buy music files from iTunes are seen as a cheap alternative to the traditional CD. Being able to download individual songs for seventy-nine pence and purchase albums for a standard fixed price has become the norm for the entire music industry.