“The Future is Not What it Used to Be”

By David Brake

Every product or service begins with an idea and then follows a path through several distinct stages. The Product Development Life Cycle is a way to visualize these stages. Some ideas go from IDEATION to LAUNCH very quickly. Others take years. Every product or service will vary in how it moves through the cycle.

Ideation

As we approach the sixth anniversary of Apple’s iPad, let’s consider its journey through the Product Development Life Cycle. You might be surprised to learn that Steve Jobs, the demanding, forward-thinking founder of Apple did not take the iPad from IDEATION to great success quickly. It took almost 30 years. Let’s take a closer look.

There is no doubt that that the iPad has been extremely successful. During its first day on the market in April of 2010 it racked up sales of 300,000 units. It sold over 2 million units in its first 60 days out, and over 19 million during its first year. Sometime in 2011 the iPad replaced the DVD player as the best-selling consumer electronics product of all time. From one perspective it would appear that Steve Jobs ideated the product, built it, and people did come. But there’s more to it than that. Much more.

The ideation started as early as 1983, some 27 years before the iPad was officially launched. That was the year that Steve Jobs gave a speech in Aspen, Colorado. He was attending the International Design Conference (IDCA). The theme that year was “The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be.” Remember, this was 1983. Apple’s Macintosh had yet to hit the market, and IBM’s PC was the market leader in personal computing.

In the speech, Jobs shared Apple’s long term strategy to “put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around and learn to use in 20 minutes.” He got a little more specific about exactly how that would be done, mentioning the use of a “radio link” that would enable the user to communicate with other computers and “larger databases.” Was Jobs’ predicting the future, or was he in the throes of an IDEATION stage that would last for years?

Fast forward ten years to 1993 when Apple introduces its first tablet computer, the Newton MessagePad 100. Apple sold 50,000 units of the product in its first three months on the market, but it never realized the kind of future that Jobs 1983 Aspen speech predicted. (It’s also important to note that in 1993 Jobs was no longer running the company. He would stage his victorious return to power in 1997 when Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, but that’s another story.

Validation & Viability

The verdict for the Newton, however, was that it was a failed product. The market did not VALIDATE it nor find it to be a VIABLE solution. I suppose the story could have ended there, but the concept that Jobs introduced at the 1983 IDCA meeting was still alive. It wouldn’t become a reality until after the iPhone was released and iterated a few times. Remember that part of the speech about the “radio link” that would enable computer to computer communication? Cell phones are nothing if not “radio links” to other computers. The iPad needed the iPhone before it could be a viable product.

Execution/Development and Launch

On January 27, 2010 Apple announced the coming forth of the iPad. This was 17 years after the introduction of the Newton and 27 years after Jobs’ Aspen speech. Not many people remembered the Aspen talk. Many more remembered the failed Newton. Reactions were mixed and there were plenty of naysayers, some saying it was nothing but a “big iPhone” and others questioning the ultimate utility of something without a physical keyboard. Apple’s product launch was brilliant. They had a strong feeling that iPhone buyers would be the first to embrace the iPad and that the shared applications and similar functionality would drive sales of both products. Clearly Apple understood something about their consumers that the so-called experts had not grokked.

Monitor

In April the iPad will celebrate its sixth birthday. You can be sure that Apple MONITORED it’s product carefully through social media, user groups and forums, and a lot of direct contact with customers. Product monitoring is a critical part of the Product Development Life Cycle. You don’t just build it, throw it out there, and let fate do the rest. You stay in touch with your customers, and Apple has become a master at that.

Revise/Regenerate

What Apple does best, however, is to REVISE and REGENERATE. The iPad (and the iPad mini) have been through at least six rounds of regeneration since April 2010. Regeneration is a key to ultimate product success. On January 27, 2015, five years after Apple’s original announcement of the iPad, the company reported that they had sold over 250 million iPads. The iPad has been one of the reasons that Apple is the most financially fit company on the planet.



Steve Jobs is no longer with us, but his 1983 idea “to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around and learn to use in 20 minutes,” is very much alive. The iPad’s 33-year journey from IDEATION to REGENERATION and around the cycle again (at least six times), has been a dramatic one. To be sure, most people and most companies would have given up. But if you understand the life cycle of every great product or service, and if you employ specific strategies during each stage of that life cycle, you will greatly increase your chances for success.

With apologies to James Earl Jones, I don’t advocate the notion that if you build it, people will come. I do believe, however, that if you involve people before you build it, while you build it, and after it is built, you will find success. You might even say that “the future is not what it used to be.”





David Brake is CEO of The Grandview Group, a technology company that helps organizations leverage the wisdom and insights of customers, prospects, and stakeholders using a life cycle review platform. His special area of practice is On-Demand Learning and qualitative Audience/Consumer research. He co-authored the first edition of an international best-selling book, The Social Media Bible (Wiley, 2009). When he’s not working he enjoys ultra-distance cycling.
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