Apple vs. Exxon-Mobil
Research #Industry #Tim Cook · 1 comment
by Horace Dediu
Tim Cook :
We can put all of our products on the table you're sitting at. Those products together sell $40 billion per year. No other company can make that claim except perhaps an oil company.
We are the most focused company that I know of, or have read of, or have any knowledge of.
We say no to good ideas every day; we say no to great ideas; to keep the number of things we focus on small in number.
Goldman Sachs technology conference, February 2010.
1 comment
ph11 ·
And, perhaps, to run a very large company successfully, one of the more reasonable paths is to have a small product mix. The underlying activity may be very complicated (in the case of exxon: oil exploration, extraction, refining, retailing; in the case of apple: miniaturization, chip design, software engineering, retailing) but, with a small suite of products, it allows all of those efforts to be directed at a handful of goals (reliable consistent petroleum products distributed widely; reliable delightful devices with a supporting ecosystem).