Start With Why

have some good managers, some good designers and smart engineers. They all make some products that work well and some that don’t . . . even Apple. Why, then, does Apple have such a disproportionate level of success? Why are they more innovative? Why are they consistently more profitable? And how did they manage to build such a cultish loyal following—something very few companies are ever able to achieve?
    People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. This is the reason Apple has earned a remarkable level of flexibility. People are obviously comfortable buying a computer from Apple. But people are also perfectly comfortable buying an mp3 player from them, or a cell phone or a DVR. Consumers and investors are completely at ease with Apple offering so many different products in so many different categories. It’s not WHAT Apple does that distinguishes them. It is WHY they do it. Their products give life to their cause.
    I’m not so foolhardy as to propose that their products don’t matter; of course they do. But it’s the reason they matter that is contrary to the conventional wisdom. Their products, unto themselves, are not the reason Apple is perceived as superior; their products, WHAT Apple makes, serve as the tangible proof of what they believe. It is that clear correlation between WHAT they do and WHY they do it that makes Apple stand out. This is the reason we perceive Apple as being authentic. Everything they do works to demonstrate their WHY, to challenge the status quo. Regardless of the products they make or industry in which they operate, it is always clear that Apple “thinks different.”
    When Apple first came out with the Macintosh, having an operating system based on a graphical user interface and not a complicated computer language challenged how computers worked at the time. What’s more, where most technology companies saw their biggest marketing opportunity among businesses, Apple wanted to give an individual sitting at home the same power as any company. Apple’s WHY, to challenge the status quo and to empower the individual, is a pattern in that it repeats in all they say and do. It comes to life in their iPod and even more so in iTunes, a service that challenged the status quo of the music industry’s distribution model and was better suited to how individuals consumed music.
    The music industry was organized to sell albums, a model that evolved during a time when listening to music was largely an activity we did at home. Sony changed that in 1979 with the introduction of the Walkman. But even the Walkman, and later the Discman, was limited to the number of cassette tapes or CDs you could carry in addition to the device. The development of the mp3 music format changed all that. Digital compression allowed for a very high quantity of songs to be stored on relatively inexpensive and highly portable digital music devices. Our ability to walk out of the house with only one easy-to-carry device transformed music into something we largely listened to away from home. And the mp3 not only changed where we listened to music, it also transformed us from an album-collecting culture to a song-collecting culture. While the music industry was still busy trying to sell us albums, a model that no longer suited consumer behavior, Apple introduced their iPod by offering us “1,000 songs in your pocket.” With the iPod and iTunes, Apple did a much better job of communicating the value of both the mp3 and the mp3 player relative to how we lived our lives. Their advertising didn’t offer exhaustive descriptions of product details; it wasn’t about them, it was about us. And we understood WHY we wanted it.
    Apple did not invent the mp3, nor did they invent the technology that became the iPod, yet they are credited with transforming the music industry with it. The multigigabyte portable hard drive music player was actually invented by Creative Technology Ltd., a Singapore-based technology company that rose to prominence by making the Sound Blaster audio technology that enables home PCs to have sound. In fact, Apple didn’t introduce the iPod until twenty-two months after Creative’s entry into the market. This detail alone calls into question the assumption of a first mover’s advantage. Given their history in digital sound, Creative was more qualified than Apple to introduce a digital music product. The problem was, they advertised their product as a “5GB mp3 player.” It is exactly the