Edge Strategy: A New Mindset for Profitable Growth

Every download is effectively an optional improvement to the original device purchase.

The company, given its strong sales and customer service culture, was already active in ancillary services; it just wasn’t charging for them.

These foundational assets are important. They help form the barriers to entry a company fosters to protect its market share. In most cases, these assets are the basis of how companies compete and seek to differentiate themselves from rival companies; they are the tools of the (win-lose) competition at the core of most corporate strategies today.

The myopia associated with core business perfectionism often blinds us to the value of what we already have. Looking around for new bets, companies also tend to overlook a significant, untapped source of profit that exists in the near field—on the edge of the core business, through the sale of ancillary goods and services that

The problem with “more” is that it only works for a while.

Accordingly, options that wrap service around product, anything that turns “do it yourself” into “do it for me,” is a journey edge.

actually make existing customers’ interaction with the business more complete.

Even the target customers you focus on are not always fully satisfied with what they are buying. This could be because their needs have evolved since the product was originally designed. Alternatively, there could be shortcomings in the design itself, which is compounded when we factor in customer mix. We

Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets. —Steve Jobs, cofounder and CEO of Apple