Aspiring entrepreneurs should build a company, not a product
(launching Next, company retreat with early employees)
More important than buidling a product, we are in the process of architecting a company. That will hopefully be much more incredible, the total would be much incredible than the sum of it parts.
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[Many people] think it means accept failure with dignity and move on. The better, more subtle interpretation is that failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it. And, for leaders especially, this strategy — trying to avoid failure by out-thinking it — dooms you to fail.
Differentiation between products is driven by the activities of the firm: product design, product performance, quality, branding, advertising, distribution, and so on. The more a product is differentiated along a dimension consumers care about, the higher price premium it can demand. So, Starbucks can charge $3.50 for a cappuccino, Hermès can charge $10,000 for a Birkin bag, and they can do so largely irrespective of input costs.
A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.
Any goal can be pursued in a variety of ways. It is the job of strategy to choose the most effective course of action for attaining objectives.
