Steve Jobs
Walked back into a nearly broke Apple and killed 70% of what it made. Bet the lot on taste. Built the most valuable company on earth.
The move
1997. Apple is 90 days from broke. Jobs walks back into the company that fired him and kills 70% of the product line. 350 products down to four. Takes $150M from Microsoft, live on stage, to keep the lights on. Then bets the company on a see-through computer nobody asked for.
Ships it anyway.
Why it was risky
The market wanted servers. The analysts wanted spreadsheets and focus groups. Jobs killed the Newton. The printers. The Mac clones. Anything that didn't fit on his simple four-box grid. Then he stood on stage and asked his biggest rival to bail him out.
The safe play was to fight on specs. He went the other way.
What it looked like
EVIDENCE 01 / STEVE JOBS, IPHONE KEYNOTE / 2007
The numbers
iMac. iPod. iTunes. iPhone. iPad. Every launch a bet on a whole new category. Every one looked mad at the time. Apple went from junk bonds to the most valuable company on earth. Cut, kill, ship. Every consumer tech company still copies it.
The lesson
Taste was the easy bit. The scary bit was killing the products that paid the bills. Jobs cut 70% of Apple because staying alive meant focus. Then he kept cutting. Kept saying no when adding more was the obvious move. R.I.S.K. is for leaders who know their next bet is to do less, on purpose.
→ Take the riskRisk shape
- Mode
- FOUNDER-OVERRULING-BOARD
- Distribution
- POWER-LAW
- Capital
- REPUTATIONAL · CONCENTRATED
- The other system's verdict
- KILLED IN A SKU OPTIMISATION REVIEW
Steve Jobs killed seventy percent of Apple's product line. Give a CMO the same job and it gets called "rationalisation across categories". Every cut needs a stakeholder meeting and a 90-day transition plan.
→ See how risk actually works
