Obama's use of the Internet in getting elected may not compare to how he intends to use these tools in governing: http://mathoda.com/archives/189

I have a slightly different analysis.. and it's one that requires talking about politics.. but hopefully that won't derail the conversation!

I don't think Obamma refused to go negative for reasons of Karma... Politics is often about manipulation... and I think the current political climate is one of people feeling like they've been manipulated by the current administration.. and there is, historically, a tendency that what ever president gets elected, he or she is almost the opposite of what we had before.. It's sorta like supply and demand.. we've been supplied with this set of things, not that set of things, so now that set of things becomes more valuable... kind of a dialectical evolution of pengalems, you might say.

So what I think Obama did was to look at that political reality, and answer it.. and I think that has a lot to do with his success.

Now if you create a brand by starting with thinking about your brand values.. and your thinking about this political reality.. The strategy of making all your stuff available via Youtube, and all the rest of it.. well.. the behavior of how information propagates through "old media" and "new media" are very very different.

In the world of old Media.. the sound bite is king.. In the land of the sound bite.. its very easy to be manipulated.. its so often nothing more then he said she said.. we all know how that battle ground effects politics and government..

But if you make all your material available.. your creating a deeper, richer kind of thing.. and that's a thing that will trump/ inoculate you from the sound bite. So I think if you go negative in a manipulative sorta way.. when you get off into this longer tail.. the manipulations don't work the same way.. so in this space you wouldn't want to manipulate in the usual way.

Take a look at social media communications.. marketing and PR.. and the values by which such campaigns are success full.. transparency.. blah blah blah.. there's an almost hippie idealism to it.. and that's a set of values that Obama played to better then Hillary. And if you look around at the people in social media.. it at least seemed to me like there were a lot more Obama supporters, and I think this very much has something to do with it.

But I'd also go so far as to say that none of the candidates, as far as I am aware of.. really did a great job with social media. I think the candidates really only took baby steps.. I think a lot of this has to do with.. who's running the campaigns and what they are comfortable with / know about / etc.

Jumping out of the politics.. and thinking more pure strategy.. My feeling is that this asymmetric stuff is where its all going, and for a number of reasons.

#1 Perhaps the biggest challenges business faces today is how do you manage change.. the internet, technology, blah blah blah.. they are all accelerating the rate of change. So what you have is a situation where its like.. trying to change the course of an aircraft carrier versus trying to change the course of a skate bored.. and if your ability to adapt to changing situations.. if this becomes more and more the key to success.. this will actually lead to a faster rate of change.. a more dynamic economy.. and it could be that you just wont have big business in the manner we have seen it in the past. You'll clearly see a rise in smaller businesses

#2 Business models are breaking down. Supply and demand has been like a core metaphysical presumption since.. well forever, right? So what happens when products are digital, and thus potentially infinite?

As a sound artist this becomes really clear:

I can produce an album in my bedroom, and actually am.. The cost is the time and energy to learn to do it.. and lets say 10 or 20 thousand dollars of equipment for a fairly serious studio.

To get the word out.. I can use social media communications strategies.. These are strategies that are about as cheap as it they come: myspace, last.fm, blogging, podcasting, influencer outreach, youtube, etc.. add to that the more conventional guerrilla publicity and marketing strategy stuff, to say nothing of your web strategy stuff.. so you can bring that product to market for an extremely low cost.

And then you have your long tail... and really, how much product do you now have to move to make a profit?

So, what are the long term ramifications of this?

In the mean time you have the recording industry acting like it wants to go out with a whimper instead of a bang.. freaking out about pirated content, and all the rest of it. We are seeing consumer behavior patterns shift.. shifting in a way that.. to put it in foucault terms.. is illegal due to power relationships.. but.. shouldn't you build your business around consumer behavior instead of trying to fight it?

So I see this kind of pattern playing its self out in all sorts of industries. Just the other day I went to an IgnightBoston thing.. and there where people talking about DIY biology!

The social media space.. and whats going on with technology is like a collective Research and Development system.. There are the conventional challenges for how you manage creativity, and research and development, which is different from how you manage the construction of hamburgers.. in the sense that you don't want the results to be the same every time.. and if you look at whats driving open source and all the rest of it.. you see its really optimized to a kind of extreme degree.

Well thats my thoughts anyway...

matt

I think the most impressive thing that the Obama campaign has done so far is that they re-examined (and then inverted) almost all of the conventional wisdom with regards to both presidential primary campaigning in general and this 2008 campaign in particular.

Examples: the Obama Campaign planned for the primary season going through to June, the Clinton Campaign assumed it would be over after Super Tuesday. They focused on the Caucus states and small states that Clinton ignored. Obama's branding (posters, website, etc) is as slick as the fanciest Fortune 500 companies, Clinton's looks old and tired (or at least used to until they started to catch up with Obama).

This Washington Post article on how Obama totally out-manuevered Clinton in Nevada is telling (losing popular vote there but winning the delegate count) and it's not as if Clinton's people were politically stupid, but they really got out-thought almost every step of the way: http://tinyurl.com/5kcea7

The whole change mantra Obama stands for combined with a realistic understanding of his strategic constraints led to the re-examination of how to run a campaign and a natural embrace of edge principles.

I guess we'll see what happens after November but it seems likely that the method of campaigning for President has permanently changed.

the parallels between ron paul and obama? - the political message

the viral nature of the 'message' (purpose) and conversation was transparent (not politics as usual). all this trust building interaction fuelled independents (mostly young voters) into a frenzy self-organized collective action

2007/2008 - will be seen as an inflection point on how future political campaigns are managed

Your example companies and politicians fight asymmetrically *today*. We're essentially at the point of transition from traditional/push to edge, right?

While in the 90's globalization of supply became the industrialist arbitrager's angle, seems like edge strategy has moved from early adopters to early majority.

Totally agree that politics are the ultimate marketer's game and the last two presidential campaigns have shifted quite dramatically in the path to success. Howard Dean was an early signal of what Obama could see as a template for success.

Great insights.

What do you think about the rise of Firefox vs. Internet Explorer as another example of asymmetric competition? Mozilla the maker of Firefox is tiny compared to Microsoft yet they keep stealing market share. Also one of the Mozilla folks wrote about asymmetric competition back in 2005: http://hecker.org/mozilla/asymmetric-competition

Let's look at those 4 criteria and ask, have you actually applied them to your examples? And you assert a negative (that this has never been possible before the low transaction/switching cost environment of the Internet), but is it really true?

"First, rarely before new and lateral entrants been able to upset incumbents so decisively – to actually put them out of commission.
Second, rarely have they been able to dominate entire industries with such speed.
Third, almost never before have so many revolutionaries threatened so many incumbents across a broad sweep of industries.
Fourth, in asymmetrical contests, yesterday’s sources of advantage become today’s sources of disadvantage."

--- Look at the companies you cite - do these 4 rules really apply?
Apple - how is apple an edge company? it seeks to vertically integrate its supply chain, it spends vast amount of money on marketing (through mainstream channels only) and design of products, has huge product launches not small, agile iteration, everything is closed, closed, closed (until you have to hack it, and then Apple punishes you by iBricking your hardware) - what's more #1, #2, #3, #4 are all arguably not applicable to Apple.

Wikipedia - a nonprofit organisation, not a business - thus not bound by profitability concerns so free to just do whatever it likes without the slightest care about revenue growth. Surely that's apples to oranges?

Ryanair - minimal attention to customer service, focus on total efficiency, tarmac turnaround, and huge annual spend on marketing through mainstream media channels. Edge? Really??? Again, do *any* of your 4 criteria apply to Ryanair?

Threadless - who's it knocking out of the market here? How big is its thunderous growth that is 'unprecedented' (when even your strawman, The Coca-Cola Company, increased syrup sales by over 4000% between 1890 and 1900), does it historically compare favourably to other new entries into the industry? back in 1969 Gap turned over $2 million (on CPI that's $11million today; as a share of GDP, it's $26.8 million today)

I'm somewhat surprised that someone at the HBR so conveniently forgets/ignores all examples of blitzkrieg market entries, but not only that, but then makes the leap to asserting that it is 'unprecedented'. Intellectual lazyness by an intelligent man desperate to assert his theoretical work as 'true' but having got used to its acceptance in the absence of peer review. Repeating theory without supporting evidence nor thorough logic enough times until accepted - how very un-edge.

For the record, I think on certain points you're spot on. But that's for another day.

Jesse Ventura did this to become governor of Minnesota back in 1998. Talk about edge and early adoption. From Wikipedia: "He spent considerably less than his opponents (about $300,000), and is widely regarded as one of the first candidates to effectively use the Internet as a medium of reaching out to voters in a political campaign." But as an example of how hard it is for experts/strategists to unlearn, it's taken this much time (10 years) for another really significant Internet campaign to successfully undo the status quo.

Reminds me of the line from Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: "The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot."

you make some great points-- particularly about Obama's strategic decision of refusing to go negative.

But that raises another question: politics aside, why didn't Hillary's negative attacks do more damage?

I think it's in the DNA. The DNA of Hillary's "brand" voice was "I will do x, y, z..." and "I have done a, b, c..." essentially "I am going to do this FOR you." She was doing classic, old-school branding: push my message and repeat it until people accept it.

Contrast that with the DNA of Obama's "brand" voice: "together WE can do x, y, z..." and "because of you, WE have done a, b, c..." He recognized the social trend of collaboration (Groundswell is a great book, btw). By truly having conversations with his supporters rather than talking AT his supporters, and allowing his supporters to take ownership of the combined cause, his campaign was able to withstand the negative attacks. His supporters likely felt those attacks as an attack on them (personally) and their cause, not just as an attack on their leader. Further, they likely felt that they knew the "real" Obama and the negative sound bites were inconsistent with that schema. So through collaboration, conversation and transparency (real or perceived-- that's a different conversation for another time), his campaign seemed to come out from each attack stronger and more determined.

my two cents.

Just a small example of Obama's digital presence to illustrate Matt Searless' comment above, and Umair's point in general:

http://logobama.com/

By taking something as solid as the Obama logo and making it available for the community at large to alter, the campaign makes a tremendous statement about their ability to let people be involved.

Always a pleasure to read the blog. Many thanks.

It seems like the numerous accounts of Hillary's reliance on (and ultimate disappointment by) old-school political loyalties and friendships are at least a little bit illuminating. We hear again and again about the Clintons telling people "we're friends, so you need to vote for Hillary." (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/us/politics/05superdelegates.html)

'Orthodox' loyalties don't exist on the edge. There are no favors; I owe you nothing. You want "loyalty"? Earn it.

It looks like Obama listened, and Obama earned it. By not relying on barriers to entry and orthodox competitive advantage, his campaign forced itself to play on the edge and bring innovation to the presidential political process.

Listen. Distribute control. Consume your own value chain. Release early, release often; iterate always. Innovate or die.

Obama may not be as entirely hip as all this; his campaign played the institutional political game masterfully, too. But it makes sense that almost every white person who's at least 65 years old voted for Hillary; they are not the edge generation.

Umair, I have a question:

You said:

"First, rarely before new and lateral entrants been able to upset incumbents so decisively – to actually put them out of commission."

Can you get a little more detailed on the How and Why? And how do you suggest larger competitors deal with this? To beat a dead horse, I'm suggesting: cooperation.

There's a post on Bubblegen that analyzes how Apple moved laterally into the phone market to upset huge competitors that begins explaining this but it would be helpful to hear another shade of detail.

Great post! It reminded me of an op-ed on the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/opinion/11rich.html : Obama is partying likes it's 2008:

"The millennials’ bottom-up digital superstructure was there to be mined, for an amalgam of political organizing, fund-raising and fun, and Mr. Obama’s camp knew how to work it. The part of the press that can’t tell the difference between Facebook and, say, AOL, was too busy salivating over the Clintons’ vintage 1990s roster of fat-cat donors to hear the major earthquake rumbling underground"

This is not an example of asymmetry. If Obama would have knocked off an incumbent, it would be asymmetrical.

Hillary Clinton never had the nomination, the media tried to give it to her because it would be easier than actually doing their job and researching other viable candidates.

While your essay seems well thought out, I can't regard it as anything but, I guess, cute. The Presidency is a few degrees of magnitude more complex than marketing and fund raising. I think your points are forced upon this subject rather than really having much bearing.

Discussing politics, especially the Presidency, without considering politics above almost anything else is by definition ignorant... with the exception of the failures of our government from the 2000 election.

Fulfilling (governing) the role of President is complex (or is it? Mr. Bush please respond) but campaigning..not so sure. It's felt like a marketing effort for some time now.

That said, these analogies are only meant to go so far but Umair's point about the voter list etc does illustrate a break from typical command/control structures to more fluid edge strategy.

It feels like a revolt against the status quo and passive consumption of messages and products that we've come to expect as the "herd."

Illustrative post. Exciting stuff.

Anton

Anyone have any predictions about what the McCain-Obama battle is going to look like in the context of this discussion? Might McCain be a little edgier than Hillary? It makes me feel kind of weird to say that about a 70+ year old ultra patriot (isn't nationalism inherently anti-edge thinking?), but there is something a little different about McCain, isn't there? I guess I could be partially blinded by the "maverick" reputation.

It's also important to note, I think, that while Obama's edge beat Hillary's core, it was CLOSE. Hopefully that snowball continues to rumble through the Alps, growing and picking up speed, but let's not forget that what Obama just won was a majority of DEMOCRAT votes. The people whose party affiliation implies an affinity for the status quo haven't had a chance to protect themselves against him yet.

He's a smart, thoughtful, and charming guy, however, and I hope that that PLUS the edge advantage will carry the day for him.

Should be fun (and nailbitingly terrifying) to watch.

Perhaps this is a story about DNA and thus cancer-like mutation or instead -- evolution and heuristic adaption; either way, instinctive strategy unfolds and it's survival of the fittest. There are times when tumors and cancer prevail -- as with the current administration which has metastasized to the point of "taking over". In that regard, a changing of the guard and the hope of change is a powerful snake oil to sell to people that feel dominated, suppressed, disillusioned and filled with contempt. It is a shame however that all the medications prescribed for hope end up having the similar side effects of an inability to produce realistic results.

I think Obama has fed off that collective need -- and hence he has been smart enough to position himself, as "the" person that is in front of a steamroller "picking up pennies". I do like that reference you make as to his micro attack versus Hillary using the forces of the old macro machine and it is also interesting how he has less background and thus gains a greater advantage. There are many unique dynamics at play here and my worry is that these paradox-like twists will incur greater fragmentation in our increasingly complex society!

Anyone have any predictions about what the McCain-Obama battle is going to look like in the context of this discussion? Might McCain be a little edgier than Hillary? It makes me feel kind of weird to say that about a 70+ year old ultra patriot (isn't nationalism inherently anti-edge thinking?), but there is something a little different about McCain, isn't there? I guess I could be partially blinded by the "maverick" reputation.

It's also important to note, I think, that while Obama's edge beat Hillary's core, it was CLOSE. Hopefully that snowball continues to rumble through the Alps, growing and picking up speed, but let's not forget that what Obama just won was a majority of DEMOCRAT votes. The people whose party affiliation implies an affinity for the status quo haven't had a chance to protect themselves against him yet.

He's a smart, thoughtful, and charming guy, however, and I hope that that PLUS the edge advantage will carry the day for him.

Should be fun (and nailbitingly terrifying) to watch.

Mark,
"Hillary Clinton never had the nomination, the media tried to give it to her because it would be easier than actually doing their job and researching other viable candidates."
While it's true that Clinton had the nomination, she was the prohibitive favorite for the nomination at the beginning of the race. She had a $100 million war chest, the support of around 100 superdelegates, one of the most well known brands in Democratic politics, and the support of most of the establishment all before a single primary. In short, Clinton basically had the Democratic party lockdowned all before a single vote was cast.

"While your essay seems well thought out, I can't regard it as anything but, I guess, cute. The Presidency is a few degrees of magnitude more complex than marketing and fund raising. I think your points are forced upon this subject rather than really having much bearing."
Sure, actually being the President is more complex. But winning a presidential campaign is pretty much entirely about strategy, marketing, and fund raising. These were even more important to Obama because he entered the race as a long shot and with a distinct disadvantage in name recognition and money.

"Discussing politics, especially the Presidency, without considering politics above almost anything else is by definition ignorant... with the exception of the failures of our government from the 2000 election."
Except politics, especially campaigning, is all about framing ones message and organizing support. The way policies are framed and articulated is often more important than the content of the policies themselves.

I agree with the majority of your article but my small dissenting point of view is your comparison of Coca Cola and Google. While the Google brand did emerge within a decade to dominance, I don't think it's a fair comparison. Beverage vs. search is quite disparate because one relies on consumer preference while the other is a technological dependent result. If Google had poor results, it would have never had succeeded. Not everyone can agree that Coke tastes the "best."

A more appropriate comparison would be Coca Cola and the rapid rise of Red Bull and Vitamin Water. Red Bull's fringe rise to multi-billion dollar property is well documented in this Fortune article: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0328/126.html

Vitamin Water's obvious success of getting acquired by CC for billions is also a testament to it's success. Both beverages entered the market at it's own terms with their own marketing strategies that shunned established rules.

As for Google, a comparison to Yahoo or even AltaVista is a good measure of the status quo that existed in 1997. The total absence of AltaVista today speaks volumes of Google's absolute dominance of the current market.

Also keep in mind that, when speaking at Google, Obama promised the nation's first CTO.

A insightful story-within-the-story post Umair.

Though I would like to point out how much the DNC's process of awarding proportional delegates contributed to Obama's strategy and subsequent victory. He was successfully able to execute Jack Welch's winning strategy at GE... first or a close second. And that is what put Obama over the top... the vote margin was close.

And the caucuses helped too... caucuses represent the "we", more than the "I"... an edge driven process.

The rules are different in November.

And yes, it does have a lot to do with DNA... Obama's campaign has evolved to become a cause.

I wrote a post a few months ago, about how We Are the Ultimate Teflon Candidate.

Here's the main point:

Obama constantly turns things from focusing on him to focusing on the collective “us”. Yes We Can. He might not have the experience, but We do. He’s not going to be the change, We are going to be the change. He’s not the one we’ve been waiting for, We are the ones we have been waiting for! It goes on and on like this.

Every criticism gets deflected from him to us. It makes it very hard to challenge him, because any criticism ends up being directed not at him, but at the collective us. And criticism of us is not going to fly.

Talk about a teflon candidate - this is kind of incredible.

Whatever your politics, you have to give the Campaign credit for being one of the most effective marketing machines we’ve ever seen. The question becomes can that be translated into the running the country effectively? (oh sorry, I forgot, it’s not about whether he can do it, because We can do that)

It was only when the issues became personal (Rev Wright,et al) that Obama struggled.

Umair, great essay and I'd like to make another point that bolsters your argument. The Obama campaign chose to focus its attention on the disruptive "business model" of caucuses more than the Clinton campaign. Running as the Industrial Age establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton's team thought she could crush her opposition by racking up a resource advantage in the form of accumulated primary votes.

But combined with its effective use of social networking tools and, as you argue, the sharing of precious organizational resources with the edge, the Obama campaign was able to unleash the passionate commitment of caucus participants who did more than just cast their votes. They evangelized, organized and engaged others in the effort to secure every last delegate, which is what won the nomination for Obama.

So I completely agree with you that the DNA of the Obama campaign has been about embracing the edge from the very beginning, in part, no doubt, to Obama's experience as a community organizer, as well as a brilliant sense of the moment from his campaign advisors.

Asymmetrical competition, to me, is the difference between marketing/advertising and enabling/empowering.
It's the push vs. pull analogy.

Google is to 'search' what Obama is to 'ideology'. Both shoot at fundamental gaps in the marketplace.
But is Google really the model 'corporation', and is Obama really the model 'politician'?

I disagree, and I think we're going down a rabbit hole in making those associations.
Why? ...because a corporation is the fluid, not the container. A politician is a leader, not the government. What Google and Obama do today is merely a winning strategy for today- not a guideline for tomorrow.

DNA is the real(and only) key.
Google is free, easy, accessible, ubiquitous, clean, service oriented.
Microsoft is expensive, Firefox-unfriendly, desktop-based, software oriented.

Obama is change, fresh, zealous, gracious, spirited, poised.
Hillary is temperamental, old hat(albeit a woman..), pretty mean at times(as you've mentioned), yada yada....

The unfortunate news? DNA => permutation.

The result? What happens when a lot of people do NO evil, and do LOTS of good?
Well, we see more symmetrical competition, equitable market share distribution, and...what...everyone's just going to sit back at that point and say "Well Rupert ol' buddy, I s'pose tha' sounds 'bout righ'"..??

I don't think so. The empire WILL strike back. We built it so it would strike back.

Welcome to (cyclical and symmetric) capitalism.

I think your analysis is bordering on naive. I list only two reasons: one logical and other factual.

Your analysis appears to be compltely post hoc. As such it is so vulnerable to reductive bias, evidence bias and various other fallacies. One must be able to deduce what you did, with (near) universally accepted facts and before the events occur.

Second, Obama got more donations from Wall Street big firms (on the books) than any other candidate. One could just as well argue that he one due to very big backing from the financial elite of NYC.

Don't get me wrong - I read your blog, I like your ideas, but please do not fall into the same trap like 90% of the social scientists, where they fall in love with their own pet hypothesis so badly, that they completely forget to try and refut it.

Obama didn't happen in a matter of months - his keynote speech at the Democratic convention in 2004 was arguably his launchpad, and much standard politicking followed over those four years that allowed him to be in a position to run in 2008 and to adopt the tactics he did.

As for your list of asymmetrical companies, I think you can argue that Ryanair and Embraer were beneficiaries of respectively local and national government subsidies.

Re: "his keynote speech at the Democratic convention in 2004 was arguably his launchpad"

Talk is cheap and as a launchpad for more talk, the talk has become a matter of scale and thus, even cheaper! Less talk, more action please!

Hey Phil Bradley (and other critics),

I love your attitude/energy, let me offer a counterpoint.

Allow me to first posit that "edge" strategies/companies don't need to check *every* box on the "edge checklist" to provide meaningful examples (especially at this stage of industrial strategy decay).

I think Apple is a great example that hits on all four points Umair offered:

1. "Lateral entrants upset incumbents decisively": The iPod was the link that made purely digital music really usable, thereby completely inverting the econ of the music industry. Computer company laterally enters the "packaged art" industry and forces it to adopt new, radically different economics and business models. I think both Apple and GOOG are only beginning to impose the same stress on mobile carriers.

2. "The upset happens fast": ~5 years for the first iPod to be introduced until every reasonably intelligent person in a room pronounces multiple profitable, public companies dead? (Of course I'm not suggesting that the iPod was solely responsible for it, but in combination w/ broadband adoption, I'd argue that it's introduction [and it's design excellence] rapidly sped things up by leveraging the other crucial part of a new value chain).

3. "Many entrants in many industries": I'll get to this more in point 4, but: iPhone (consumer and enterprise communication), AppleTV (video), iPod, Mac (business, education)...plus I'm sure there's some work they're doing w/ developers that I'm missing (iPhone SDK hysteria, etc). Tata is another example, with their plans to reconfigure manufacturing and sales into a network of franchised, distributed mini factories.

4. "Yesterday's advantage = today's disadvantage": I'm not an expert here, but it seems clear that the US carriers' reliance on opaque contracts and lack of investment in the user experience are major liabilities now that Apple can use the demand for the iPhone to play them off each other. Steve also played the record labels like a fiddle (selling the songs at a loss, but making the trade in favor of simplicity (no variable pricing) and choice (making sure he had all the catalogs). Investing in user experience.

One final, quick point, re: "Apple spends a ton on mass media marketing." Yeah, but I'd argue those ads are profoundly optimized for mass media (unlike most TV advertising). They're strictly focused on awareness and imparting simple, core value propositions (especially the iPhone "how to" commercials and the Mac v. PC commercials). Beyond that, I'd argue the legions of Mac enthusiasts do 95% of Apple's marketing. How many times have you heard or been a part of a conversation where a Mac user was bagging on PC's and trying to convince someone to switch? Or people showing their iPhone to other people? I've been a part of dozens and dozens of these interactions over the last ~15 years.

I bring all this up not to debate the merits of my own perspective, but to make the point that a little more reflection on why you disagree with the original post might get to an even deeper critique (which I know is in there ;-)

Best,

Ethan

Hi Ethan, thanks for the reply - though I was hoping for one from Umair too!

I submit that both you and he make interesting points, but I think they're being shoehorned into a hopeless conceptual framework (manichean) using a litany of logical fallacies, which another commenter above lists more elegantly than I could - primarily, post-rationalising black swan events. Theories are meant to be predictive and the theoretician and his peers should be designing valid tests for it.

But to continue with this Apple point - because it's important, either as the exception that proves the rules, or the exception that sends the theory crashing to the ground.

#1 Apple entered the MP3 player world laterally, yes, but not because it has 'good DNA' - many other computer manufacturers at the time also entered. It was not unique in that respect and so that statement alone tells us nothing. Furthermore, it did not deliver any kind of technical innovation over its competitors, merely better UX, branding and marketing, and a tie-in to an online music store (not even in the 'good' format, mp3, but in a closed and proprietary, DRM'ed format. Did this evil, userfreedom-restricting decision put off customers? Nope. Did being evil (DRM) allow the iTunes music store to sign up all the major labels, and thus crush all 'open' and 'good' competitors? Absolutely.)

#2 until we can conclude that Apple is a 'good' company, this is just another vanilla example of disruptive entry into markets. This is not new, nor is the timescale, and the point of disruptive entries is that rivals suffer. Apple's mp3 player entry does not demonstrate much to be particularly unique about this period. Also, is good DNA demonstrably relevant here? Nah. If I had any confidence in the utility of a good vs. evil 'letterbox' view of business strategy I would construct a solid argument for 'evil DNA' being crucial to Apple's strategy. But I think making moralistic judgments of business strategy is fatuous and completely subjective, so totally invalid. if I've done so so far, it's only after trying to align myself with the 'moral positions' of people who subscribe to this 'theory'.

#3 I believe refers to this being an era where N (where n= number of disruptive companies) is higher than ever - not that singular corporations are using totally 'new DNA' to allow them to enter many markets disruptively. Either way - no, it's not new, the industrial revolution, remember? Yes, this era is a new revolution - the information era - and even in biochemistry, biology, ecology, etc, flux periods are temporary windows for new monopolies to form and new entrants to establish themselves in niches. But is there any evidence of (a) this being a unique feature of this period, not seen before in society? and (b) asides from false and boring pointers to Google, that 'new DNA' promotes entry to a wide range of markets where 'evil DNA' does not?

#4 What on Earth is new or good about negotiating exclusivity deals with an incumbent service? What good has this delivered for the customer?? FURTHERMORE, the iPhone is possibly the GREATEST counterexample to this whole snake oil, if you truly believe it's relevant here. It is a product that, unlike all previous phones, (a) locks in the user to a specific network of Apple's choosing, not of his/her choosing (b) locks that user into a very expensive price plan with no options at the lower end of the package scale (c) you end up paying craploads even for SMS - the greatest rip-off imaginable. If Apple was 'good' or 'new' it would use its iPhone 'bargaining chip' to force carriers to cut their outrageous SMS and roaming charges, no? Not at all. (d) it's your device, very powerful, lots of potential, and it won't even let you run 3rd party applications on it that don't come through it's Apps Store. Compare that to Symbian or Google Android or EVEN Windows Mobile! It's unique in the amount of control it demands - you can't even run background apps on your iPhone, like an alarm clock, without it being done on Apple's own servers - so they demand to know what you're doing with your phone - even as an inconvenience to you (what happens to your iPhone background processes if you're out of signal?).

I notice, by the by, that the author has dropped Apple as an example in his latest blog post, though retains the others. I wonder, if Apple was so easy to knock off the list by just one reader, what would happen if other salient readers who knew more about the others than I do, actually examined the validity of the others?

Obama had nothing to lose when he joined the race in the first place.

Phil, it seems like you're arguing the whole good/evil/DNA heuristic in moral terms, when it really has nothing to do with morality:

"I think making moralistic judgments of business strategy is fatuous and completely subjective, so totally invalid."

As Umair has said, it has nothing to do with morality. It's just a guidepost for devising relatively more productive strategies/tactics in a world of cheap info: What goes around comes around.

E

This is one of the excellent article that I have read till date. The correlation of politics and business is done with lucid illustrations that summarises the topic to its title.

We all have had experiences which have made us believe that we need to go by books, play safe, risk is to be cautiously calculated, ethics are wellsaid however not implementable. It's just that we havent ventured out to think out-of-the-box.
I strongly believe that we need to take along people with us diplomatically, on the path of goal achievement and that's what Obama did. If you see his speeches he did talk about clinton governance and did point fingers logically where people coud definately find faults and agree to what Obama said. He did not underestimate his voters but demonstrated that they have mind of their own to think and should decide how they want their future to be. He left the decision in the hands of his voters.

We all have been conditioned to do things in 'a' ways. Looking at the market condition no one wants to take risk or explore and beat the fear of failure and the fact is, this hesitance is leading to failure for most of the organizations.

Steve & Berry's, Starbucks, Microsoft vs. Yahoo! are prominent examples where working in traditional manner is leading to failure. Had Steve & Berrys, Starbucks strived innovative ways to keep their flavour and charm in the market - the purpose of their existence then they would have been better off today! Microsoft is making the same mistake which Yahoo! did at one point and time. Google has been smart.
Looks like its a vicious circle and if best practices applied universally then we can overcome obstracles.

These words need to be implemented,
Innovation. Think Big. Risk Taking. High Performance delivered. Just do it.