1. Hone your instinct (part one):  You must be able to know with certitude whether a new product or service will succeed in a big way among your customer base — moments after hearing about it for the first time.
2. Hone your instinct (part two): Similarly, you must know (without tests or focus groups) if marketing language or PR outreach will resonate with its intended audience. Instinct comes from a mix experience, awareness and confidence. Hone these three elements, and you’ll develop a sharp instinct.
3. Micromanage: Worry about getting the product and the marketing right, not about offending your team, or stepping on toes.
4. Don’t be first to market: History shows that it’s almost impossible to be first in a new product category and be successful with a critical mass of customers. None of the iPod, iPad, Mac, or iPhone were first in their product category.
5. Instead, perfect categories without a dominant player: Mainstream success is very diffcult once there’s a dominant player. It’s why HP got out of tablets recently six months after getting in. So don’t pave the path in a new product category, but do try to put forth the perfect product in a category before somebody else does.

My Harvard Business Review article on what Jobs’s resignation means to the consumer electronics industry is here. (Athough the headline, written by editors, is more severe than the piece itself.)

These pieces are called “Minutes” because they will always be short enough to read in about 60 seconds.

My blog features new marketing thinking and ideas, updated multiple times each week.