Fustest With the Mostest

Posted on Aug 29, 2012 | 2 Comments

Apple has plenty to be pleased about in light of its $1 billion victory over Samsung in a landmark patent-infringement case. But what does having a firm grip on a bunch of smartphone bells and whistles mean in terms of the company’s entrepreneurial strategy?

For much, if not all, of its existence, Apple has pursued what Peter Drucker called being “Fustest With the Mostest” (a strategy we’ve discussed before), meaning that your product can be imitated but you’re always a step ahead of everyone else. Many of Apple’s competitors, by contrast, have relied primarily on what Drucker called “creative imitation” (an approach that we’ve also examined). In fact, the imitators have often tried to mirror products pioneered by Apple. Samsung was doing this quite successfully—at least until five days ago.

Being “Fustest with the Mostest” enjoys a lot of esteem in the popular imagination, Drucker noted. But it also presents its own challenges. Among them: There’s no margin for error.

“Being ‘Fustest with the Mostest’ is very much like a moon shot,” Drucker wrote in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “A deviation of a fraction of a minutes of the arc and the missile disappears into outer space.”

Image source: Flickr Commons

For this reason, this Fustest-with-the-Mostest entrepreneurial strategy—the one on which Apple arguably most depends—is ideally avoided. “In most cases alternative strategies are available and preferable,” Drucker warned, “not primarily because they carry less risk, but because for most innovation the opportunity is not great enough to justify the cost, the effort and the investment of resources required.”

“Everyone knows the old Swiss story of Wilhelm Tell the archer, whom the tyrant promised to pardon if he succeeded in shooting an apple off his son’s head on the first try,” Drucker added. “If he failed, he would either kill the child or be killed himself. This is exactly the situation of the entrepreneur in the ‘Fustest with Mostest’ strategy. There can be no ‘almost-success’ or ‘near-miss.’ There is only success or failure.”

So far, Apple has been amazingly successful, and its patent victory seems to provide a measure of protection. The question is, does the past necessarily portend the future?

What do you think: Should Apple continue to bank on a Fustest-with-the-Mostest strategy?

2 Comments

Maverick18
August 31, 2012
“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” Attributed to Ralph Waldp Emerson over a hundred years ago. It worked for Apple, and there is no reason that it should not
continue to be their approach.
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Arjun Chandrasekhar
September 3, 2012
Apple was stuck in a rut for decades. It is only when the whole category of mobile computing slowly came to life that Apple was well placed, in pole position and ready to lift itself out of the rut. The APP phenomenon, mobile music (iPods), seamless integration of functions etc. which Apple had developed competencies in, for a different category of devices (which did not excite the market) – instantly could be applied to a whole new category of devices i.e. mobile computing.

I do not believe that it was with the intention of getting into the mobile computing category that Apple had developed the competencies I mention above. It was not by design but more by chance that Apple was best placed (with the competencies it had developed) to take advantage of the explosion in the mobile computing category. This might not repeat itself.

Eventually innovation will plateau and become the ordinary. To be able to sustain the expectation of the market, remain relevant and manage the process of staying afloat in a highly unpredictable category as technology, is the key to long term existence (even if it boring).

I agree with the words of Peter Drucker mentioned in the article – “In most cases alternative strategies are available and preferable,” Drucker warned, “not primarily because they carry less risk, but because for most innovation the opportunity is not great enough to justify the cost, the effort and the investment of resources required.”

One can try and develop a culture of innovation in an organisation like 3M and others but one should also be cognizant of the category that the business is operating in. The technology sector, a highly unpredictable and disruptive category is not where one can keep winning bets all the time. You will be lucky if you can just remain relevant for long periods of time.
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