Innovation: Apple or The Importance of Finetuning Your Portfolio Life Cycles

You cannot survive or stay successful with one product for all time. Markets need change, need new input, new impulses.

Cannibalizing your own products is the best you can do - if you do it right. Not doing it at all mostly means you do not have any innovation. Not doing it at all mostly opens your product's weaknesses to the competition or encourages new market entries. Both must be avoided.

You need a future-driven stream of innovation(s) covering the next years. No, you cannot wait till tomorrow to start thinking about your next product. You cannot rest upon your past or present successes.

If you want to read the following lines from fastcompany about your own company, brand or product, you should start creating and innovating today!

"The first quarter of 2010 has been Apple's most profitable non-holiday quarter in history; revenue is up 49%, gross income is up 90%, and, after the announcement, stock prices jumped 7%. In terms of broken-down sales, Mac sales are up 33% and iPhone sales are up a frankly ridiculous 131%, more than doubling last year's first quarter results.

Interestingly, we got one more piece of evidence that the iPod Touch has no business remaining in the "iPod" category, when it should be lumped in with the other iPhone OS devices (the iPhone and iPad). iPod Touch sales were up 63%, yet iPod category sales were down 1%--the dedicated mp3 player market is dying quickly, and old outmoded stalwarts like the iPods Classic, Nano, and Shuffle are losing sales like crazy. But that's okay; the iPhone and its ilk have replaced the iPod as Apple's portable money-printing machine."

I know you can do it! All the best.