Core and Diferentiation

Differentiation by Geoffrey Moore
Differentiation
The first possible outcome of innovation is differentiation, which, in this context, is the ultimate aim to achieve competitive separation. Although the result of differentiation gives the highest reward to the organization, it is nevertheless difficult to achieve. It requires focus, prioritization and commitment.

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One differentiation projects that don’t go far enough. Just consider, for example, the American automobile industry for say the last 40 years. When did they go far enough, maybe five times. Maybe five, but for 800 cars per 10,000 or however many different cars. They made who cared? Can you really call to mind a picture of the Buick? Or a Pontiac? Or an Oldsmobile? No you can’t. It’s impossible. Even the designers can’t remember. Differentiation projects that don’t go far enough. Why did he not go far enough because somebody thought it was too risky because at some point we went maybe we should just pull our hearts and a little bit. Our fin is as tall as two people made who should bring it down. All give you an example. It’s really painful.

This is painful to the folks at Motorola, two years before Apple announces the iPhone Motorola knows it’s happening worse. Motorola has all of the technology to build iPhone in-house at the time. Now the software is about creaky, or whatever, but they had all a haptic stuff they had that and they could not do it could not get it done. It would be going too far. It would be going too far. So the one of the wonderful things about being in a small company is enough who’s the arbiter of too far question mark you. That would be you. So maybe you have to influence a couple more people, but not 20, not 50. Not a Board of Directors that supply chain, you know? Not carriers like AT&T and Verizon. Just you and the customer.

The thing that’s reckless about Apple and the reason that Apple makes these things happen. This is never been Apple’s problem is because, at the margins, Steve makes the call. Steve is very good at going far enough, leaving out something you can’t possibly leave out – a DVD drive, or whatever the latest thing is that you think be in there that he didn’t put in there.

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So the importance of getting of focusing on differentiation is really high.
We call that vector of differentiation core and have a very specific definition here, so core are the processes, or the projects, or the features, or the services, or whatever else that you do that enable and amplify your chosen factor of competitive differentiation. The thing that makes separate from the others. That in itself is kind of an interesting word. But what’s really interesting is that means that anything that is not core is context. What you discover as you running a business over time. Most of what you do is context, not core, and the most frustrating thing in your life is that the context gets in the way of the core that your context. Duties get more and more and more and more, but their mission-critical and their urgent, so you can’t just blow them off, so you do them, but you say, “God, I’m not getting to the core.” The whole point. The thing that so much fun of having a company of one or two is that you actually spend quite a lot of time of core, but as you start having success. Ironically, more and more the business becomes things that are not the differentiating part of the business, but become context.

They need attention, and if you don’t establish a really strong core context discipline. If you don’t get up in the morning and say, core before context, you’ll come to the end of the day and find out that your e-mail trail beat you to death.

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One differentiation projects that don’t go far enough. Just consider, for example, the American automobile industry for say the last 40 years. When did they go far enough, maybe five times. Maybe five, but for 800 cars per 10,000 or however many different cars. They made who cared? Can you really call to mind a picture of the Buick? Or a Pontiac? Or an Oldsmobile? No you can’t. It’s impossible. Even the designers can’t remember. Differentiation projects that don’t go far enough. Why did he not go far enough because somebody thought it was too risky because at some point we went maybe we should just pull our hearts and a little bit. Our fin is as tall as two people made who should bring it down. All give you an example. It’s really painful.

This is painful to the folks at Motorola, two years before Apple announces the iPhone Motorola knows it’s happening worse. Motorola has all of the technology to build iPhone in-house at the time. Now the software is about creaky, or whatever, but they had all a haptic stuff they had that and they could not do it could not get it done. It would be going too far. It would be going too far. So the one of the wonderful things about being in a small company is enough who’s the arbiter of too far question mark you. That would be you. So maybe you have to influence a couple more people, but not 20, not 50. Not a Board of Directors that supply chain, you know? Not carriers like AT&T and Verizon. Just you and the customer.

The thing that’s reckless about Apple and the reason that Apple makes these things happen. This is never been Apple’s problem is because, at the margins, Steve makes the call. Steve is very good at going far enough, leaving out something you can’t possibly leave out – a DVD drive, or whatever the latest thing is that you think be in there that he didn’t put in there.