Win Big By Doing Just A Few Things Well∞
Great post over at Signal vs. Noise about how focusing on a few things and doing them well can be better than trying to do everything.
The article cites some good examples (Nintendo, Flip video cameras) but misses some huge ones. Apple, for one. The iPod has no FM radio, no voice recording, no customizable equalizer, no removable storage, and no removable battery—yet it has somewhere around 70% of the market for mp3 players.
Twitter is another great example. Anecdotally, most people dismiss Twitter as “Facebook, except only the status feature.” But by taking that feature and doing it much better than Facebook, they found a huge audience. And while we’re on the topic, Facebook has fewer features than MySpace—you can’t customize your profile or set a profile song, for example—yet it’s more popular, especially with people over the age of 13 or so.
Bottom line: it’s better to do a few things and do them well than to try to do everything and fall short.
