Personal Intelligence isn’t just another product—it’s a shift in how we’ll interact with technology.

Here’s why this matters:

AI as the New Standard: Apple is not just adding AI to its lineup. It’s making AI the backbone of how we interact with our devices. This move is about creating a personal intelligence system that’s integrated seamlessly into our lives, so tech is more intuitive and indispensable.

Consumer-First Innovation: Apple is doubling down on what they do best—creating products people love to use. By focusing on “personal intelligence” AI, the company is enhancing user experiences, developing smarter technology, and making it more personal. This is about building tools that make life easier and more enjoyable.

Partnerships Over Competition: Instead of letting Competition Derangement Syndrome push them to outgun OpenAI or Microsoft, Apple is playing the smart game by teaming up. This partnership isn’t only about tech. It’s about setting a new standard for how companies can collaborate to push the boundaries of what’s possible in AI.

Why should you care?

Because Apple’s latest move shows us category designers how to stay ahead in a world where technology is evolving faster than ever.

Here’s what you can take away from this:

Evolve, Don’t Just Innovate: Apple’s approach is a masterclass in how to build on your strengths while moving into new territories. They’re not simply adding features—they’re rethinking what tech can do for us.

Stay Close to Your Superconsumers: Apple’s focus on making its products more intuitive, user-friendly, and secure is a reminder that understanding and addressing your Superconsumers’ needs is the key to staying relevant.

Leverage Smart Alliances: Apple’s decision to partner with OpenAI instead of competing head-to-head shows that sometimes, the best strategy is to join forces. OpenAI won the AI category battle. Apple acknowledged that and is continuing to focus on its “Be the Best” strategy. Sometimes, strategic partnerships can accelerate innovation.

Apple’s announcement is a big deal not just because of what it means for their products, but because it sets a new standard for how to think about AI and innovation. They’re showing us the future isn’t about isolated advancements but integrated, thoughtful growth.

Let’s take this as a cue to review our strategies and consider how we can innovate in smart, consumer-focused, and collaborative ways.

The game is changing, and those who adapt will lead. This is a reminder to think big, act bold, and always look for the next wave to ride.

What are you creating that will set a new (and different) standard in your category?

The Power of Outcomes dives into the transformative power of focusing on outcomes over efforts. It shows how this shift can significantly elevate your professional value and impact by showing that true success and recognition in business come not from simply working hard but from strategically creating and leveraging outcomes that deliver exponential value. Through real-life examples and actionable insights, you’ll learn how to identify, generate, and communicate your unique outcomes to achieve a legendary status in your career.

Competition Derangement Syndrome plagues many companies, blinding them to new opportunities and stifling innovation. However, Strategy Therapy provides a cure through radical honesty and courage, helping executives design categories anew versus compete over stale demands. By facing competition directly and guiding it gently away, you’ll learn how to overcome fear and chart a way to dominate new and different categories.

The Three Marketing Metrics to Rule Them All, Part 1 will challenge you to rethink conventional marketing wisdom. Because only marketing efforts that drive measurable revenue truly count. You’ll get actionable insights and a no-nonsense approach to help you redefine marketing success as the ability to deliver tangible results that propel your company to Category Queen status.

In How to Reframe the Problem and Win, you’ll learn the important process of looking at old problems in new ways. We'll show you how to step outside the typical market battles and carve out your own unique category. It’s all about spotting the overlooked details that others miss and using them to create groundbreaking solutions. By the end of this mini-book, you’ll learn how to start rethinking the problems worth solving and pivot from competing to innovating.

The Experience Economy has morphed with the tech tide, making experiences more personalized, more Instagrammable, and way more immersive.

Social media cranks up the need for experiences to be share-worthy—nobody’s posting a bland meal or a dull hotel room. And with VR, AR, and AI in the mix, we’re not just talking about jazzing up reality but creating new ones.

Now, consumers aren’t just buying.

They’re part of the show.

It’s not just what you sell, but how you make people feel that hooks them in for the long haul.

They expect to roll up their sleeves and dive into the experience, influencing and shaping it as they go. This is the playground where they want to co-create, tweak to their taste, and put their own stamp on the experience. And as the global market keeps leaning hard into services, standing out is tougher than ever.

That's where experiences swing in like a hero.

Joe Pine’s early vision of the Experience Economy laid down the tracks that have led to a vast, vibrant landscape where experiences are the main event. And it’s constantly evolving with new tech, deeper consumer involvement, and a relentless push for the next big thing that’ll connect with customers.

Building on this foundation, Joe Pine introduced the Hero's Journey as a transformative tool within the Experience Economy.

This concept, drawn from Joseph Campbell's universal motif of adventure and transformation, lets companies reframe their customer interactions as narrative-driven adventures.

By applying the Hero's Journey, businesses design each phase of the customer experience as part of an overarching narrative, transforming customers from passive recipients into protagonists of their own stories.

In this narrative-driven model, customers face challenges, receive guidance, overcome obstacles, and ultimately achieve a transformational victory.

For example, in healthcare, a patient's journey through treatment can be seen as a heroic quest against illness, with providers acting as mentors. In financial services, guiding clients toward financial independence becomes a journey of overcoming trials to reach a rewarding retirement.

This use of the Hero's Journey does more than enhance a customer’s experience.

It connects on a deeper emotional level, creating a sense of accomplishment and resonance that's so important for building a community of dedicated Superconsumers.

This narrative approach shifts the interaction from transactional to emotionally engaging and personally significant. It embodies the core of value creation in the Experience Economy. And today, we’re hearing about it from Joe Pine himself.

The Annual Strategy Planning Trap reveals the pitfalls that ensnare too many companies and leaders in short-sighted squabbles, instead of charting a course for category dominance. By understanding the forces that drive our obsession with competition and adopting a mindset of abundance, we can free ourselves to think up new and different futures. With the right tools and focus on our customers' needs above all else, we'll explain how to escape these endless cycles and instead design categories that create enduring value for decades to come.

Berkshire Hathaway is a one of one, legendary Category Queen of investors.

How do we know this? Its annual stockholder meeting, aka the ‘Woodstock of capitalism,' looks more like a sold-out concert of Swifties than a gathering of shareholders.  

We Pirates were delighted when Berkshire invested in Apple in 2016, just like when the greatest bands in the world mash-up for the 2016 Superbowl halftime show.

This investment was radically different for Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. They famously avoided investing in ‘things they didn’t understand,' like technology. Munger literally said, “You could hardly think of another business that is more un-Berkshire-like than Apple.”

But Buffett became intrigued when he heard the iPhone had a 95% retention rate. 

It reminded him of some of his other famous investments (like Coca-Cola) that had similar ‘addiction level’ loyalty. So, Berkshire invested $36 billion. And Apple became the single most successful stock holding in Berkshire’s history.

Apple is another OG Category Queen, but will it maintain its position as an innovative, dominating company? 

We have a world of respect for Tim Cook, who created massive success and abundance in what was an impossible job of taking over from the most Piratey of Pirates, Steve Jobs. (This was the thank you letter Pirate Eddie wrote after Jobs passed away.)

But Pirate June-Bug whispered something into Pirate Christopher’s ear, having come from high on her perch on the pirate ship. 

 She squawked, “The winds are changing…”

 Berkshire Hathaway reduced their Apple stake by 13% in Q1 of 2024. This is the second quarter in a row that Berkshire trimmed its Apple holdings.

 Apple announced a massive stock buyback of $110 billion dollars, which is both the largest buyback in Apple’s history and in the history of the entire stock market.

 Apple canceled Project Titan, its EV venture, after having invested $10 billion.

What does this mean for Apple, its shareholders, and the categories it dominates? 

Let’s look at Apple through the Strategy Therapy lens: evaluating it for brutal honesty, courage, and clarity.

Brutal Honesty

Honesty is one of Apple's strengths.

Jobs famously said, “Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” Apple’s decision to cancel its EV was disappointing, but we Pirates respected the stance. The company was super honest that a) Tesla and BYD were too far ahead and b) there was no legacy auto manufacturer who could help it catch up. Apple knew it would look bad in the press and it would not be fun to fire/redeploy the 5,000 employees working on it.

But it still shut down the project.

Radical Courage

This area is where we're disappointed with Apple, given the information we have. Pirates generally hate stock buy-backs because it is an admission that executives don’t see anything worthy of investment. The conversation at the leadership level often goes like this:

"Susan, I’m sorry to report that the executive team has run out of ideas."

“Sorry to hear that Jimmy. I guess we’ll just buy back the stock, and buy our way to market cap growth.”

Is it truly the case that there was no better use for the $110 billion dollars than stock buybacks? We say, “Avast ye matey! That be a plank ye walking on.” There’s too much evidence that there are numerous trillion-dollar markets to invest in:

 Electric Vehicles: The automotive market is $2.9 trillion dollars. Only 18% of the market was EVs. It’s just a matter of time before EVs are the majority of sales.

 Robo-Taxis/Autonomous Driving: Ark Investment projects ride-hailing via autonomous vehicles to be an $11 trillion dollar market.

 Artificial Intelligence: Ark Investments also projects the total AI software market to be $14 trillion by 2030.

Now, the global GDP in 2023 was $27 trillion. 

So these numbers might feel insane…

…but welcome to the worldview of Category Design. It’s a world of abundance and massive economic outcomes for the courageous few willing to work on the exponential different. Apple has one of the largest cash balances of any non-financial institution on the planet (over $160 billion), and Apple’s free cash flow for 2023 was $99.584B. It is a cash manufacturing plant. Investing in a monster-stacked cake of that size is no mean feat. 

And yet…

We’re disappointed to see Apple fold its cards and cash out (so many of) its chips to shareholders.

Clarity

Apple's worldwide developer conference is in June. Tim Cook has teased big plans for Artificial Intelligence. We hope (at a minimum) the team can fix Siri! 

When asked directly why Berkshire trimmed its position in Apple, Warren Buffett noted that he expected capital gains taxes to increase in the near future, given the US government’s debt loads and deficits. He reiterated that Apple was a wonderful business, just like Coca-Cola and American Express are wonderful businesses. And he said he hopes to own all of these businesses for the foreseeable future. 

Buffett is clearly not worried the sky is falling for Apple.