(1) Explain Apple’s success over the last decade. Think about which industries it has disrupted and how.

Apple has been successful because they have been willing to tackle every competitive challenge they have faced head on. They spent the time they needed to look at the situation they were in and see where they weren’t measuring up and where their competitors were better and also what they had that they could use. They realized that they couldn’t compete in the market they were in because the other companies were better, so they decided to focus in that market to get really good products. Plus, because they knew they couldn’t rely on that crowded market, they decided they had to come up with something new. By innovating over and over again in ways that made customers happy in ways that their competitors just didn’t seem able to do. For every big innovation they did, they also kept adding small innovations to get more profit out of them. Every big innovation moved them into new industries. So they disrupted music players, cell phones, tablets, and record stores.

(2) Is Apple’s success attributable to industry effects or firm effects, or a combination of both? Explain.

I think they mostly succeeded from firm effects. The industries they were in looked like there wasn’t must profit to be had and not much room for them to make money. But because they kept innovating and changing the types of products available in the industries they entered, it seemed like they didn’t have to deal with the same types of constraints that existed in the industry.

(4) Why do you think it is so hard not only to gain but to sustain a competitive advantage?
I think it’s hard because once you get ahead of everyone else, they all start paying attention to you. They see what you have that other people like, so they start copying it. But because they