“Given that background, I was interested in what Steve Jobs might say about the future of Apple. His survival strategy for Apple, for all its skill and drama, was not going to propel Apple into the future. At that moment in time, Apple had less than 4 percent of the personal computer market. The de facto standard was Windows-Intel and there seemed to be no way for Apple to do more than just hang on to a tiny niche.
In the summer of 1998, I got an opportunity to talk with Jobs again. I said, "Steve, this turnaround at Apple has been impressive. But everything we know about the PC business says that Apple cannot really push beyond a small niche position. The network effects are just too strong to upset the Wintel standard. So what are you trying to do in the longer term? What is the strategy?"”

— Richard Rumelt

He did not attack my argument. He didn’t agree with it, either. He just smiled and said, "I am going to wait for the next big thing."
Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 14; Similar story in Rumelt (2007)

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Richard Rumelt25

American economist 1942

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