Goliath's Revenge

Chapter 4 Rule 1: Deliver Step-Change Customer Outcomes

I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.

—Steve Jobs, Apple CEO

We now shift from the descriptive to the prescriptive—from “What is going on?” to “What should I do about it?” If you have done the homework from the first few chapters, then you should have three things in hand: your career and company midterm report card grades for the six rules of Goliath’s Revenge (Chapter 1) and the inventory of crown jewels that give your company the incumbent’s advantage (Chapter 2). We now turn our attention to what each of these six rules means for how you and your company will navigate digital disruption and carve out your place in that right hump of Figure 3.1’s winner-takes-most curve.

The knee-jerk reaction of most established companies when faced with aggressive digital disruptors is “We need to get more innovative.” While that is certainly better than being less innovative, it is not very helpful in choosing what areas to focus your career’s and your company’s innovation strategy on. Every organization, no matter how large, has a fixed amount of energy, talent, and capital to spend on innovation. You must concentrate your efforts on the step-change customer outcome that is most likely to deliver profitable growth for your company and an upward career trajectory for you.

As Steve Jobs so succinctly put it in the quote that opens this ...