Apple has an announcement scheduled for this Tuesday. There is much speculation of innovations within the MacBook line, including potentially a low cost product line. As a Mac user, I am eagerly awaiting what is next. Whatever their announcement is, one can be sure it will continue to build on Apple’s core competencies.

Core competency originates from C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel in their 1990 paper “The Core Competence of the Corporation.” Prahalad and Hamel highlight core competency as a source of uniqueness that a company can do uniquely well, offering a competitive advantage as competitors can’t quickly copy. A core competency can take various forms: know how, process, manufacturing, relationship, development methodology, culture, talent management, branding, marketing, distribution, research & development, …
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Is there anything more obvious than presidential elections to highlight the feebleness, fallibleness and natural biases that we call human nature?

From birth, we start building a view of our reality, our own “Matrix”, completely driven and influenced by what we see, touch, feel, think, value, experience… As a survival mechanism, we are programmed to classify and sort everything we see in terms that are familiar to us: too liberal, very conservative, too skinny, fake blond, risk taker, risk adverse, real thinker, open and approachable, too talkative, stuck in his ways, … As bad as this may sound, it is natural and it is human. Other than our past experiences, our values that have been developed through the society we interact with, we have no additional reference for what we see and hear.

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.”
–Ken Olson, president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
–Harry M. Warner, president of Warner Brothers Pictures, about 1927.

We like to believe we are open minded. But we seldom realize this is an illusion, a paradox. We are social creatures. We look for ways to belong and be accepted. So we seek people that share our beliefs, values and opinions. We look for evidence to support, to confirm our opinions and ideas. But we neglect to search for contradicting evidence. As much as we try, we can’t escape this natural law of humanity. However, if we recognize and accept that we are feeble and fallible, then we can establish practices to balance these natural biases that are inherent in every one of us.
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