Surviving during uncertain times

To survive during uncertain times, you and your company must be able to survive the downturn. You and your company must build competencies which will hold their ground when competition strikes or when the market changes. I was thinking about building competences when I read this article in Economic times. I found it relevant.
“ The world would truly have been a better place if Steve Jobs had thought a bit like his archival Bill Gates”- Michael Cusumano,Professor of management @ MIT Sloan.
As per Michael,  there are 6 enduring principles which any company should  be following to stay in the race . They are
1. Build Platforms not products .
The reason why far superior Macintosh Computer didn’t have a greater market share than clumsy Windows PC is because Microsoft went in for a ‘platform strategy’.
What is platform strategy?
A company should own a platform and license its code to other developers to innovate. In this way other developers would modify the code and make their own applications. Hence the platform gets used exponentially. This leads to greater market share. Be a platform leader.
Apple held onto the Macintosh operating system. If it had licensed the operating system it would have become 100 times more popular than windows.
Take I-phone. I-phone too began as product which runs only Apple applications. But soon Apple learnt from their past mistakes and modified I-phone to run other applications. Hence I-phone has a market share of 60%+ in the smart phone segment. 
2. Build Services not just platforms and products.
Business is dealing with people. If you have a service and if it is in tune with the needs of the people then your business will survive. I’m sure major banks in the world make more selling insurance, home loans then standard banking operations(fixed deposits, Chq issuing…)
3. Build capabilities(how to do things) than strategies(what to do).
If you want to endure during uncertain times its better to develop systems to empower your employees to do things correctly, but to develop these process you must have a through understanding of the business you are in.

4. Focus on scope ,not just scale.
Focus on using a common base of technology to solve multiple problems of customers, hence multiple products. This is similar to a factory which has a fixed set of components but the factory can produce different types of products.

5. While marketing- Pull not push.
Attract people to your product, they will spread the word. This requires interacting with customers and  creating products in lieu with customers expectations, dynamically.

6. Seek flexibility not efficiency.You need people who are flexible( people who can perform a variety of functions) than people who can do only activity.  This means more work will be completed but they may not be 100% efficient. If they are 80% efficient, that’s ok.
-Staying power: Six enduring principles for managing strategy and innovation in an uncertain world – Michael Cusmano.