The smart approach to recession

If you are in as dreamy a situation as Apple, with wads of cash, a great looking balance sheet and no debt, you might as well follow Steve Jobs’ wise counsel. This is what Michael Roberto of Conversation Starter quoted him as telling in Fortune magazine (is this meta quoting…?):

“In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that’s exactly what we did. And it worked. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this time”

Jobs was referring to previous recessionist environments and of course, to the current one. As Roberto reflects in his post on the matter, in a recession there are a number of good actions to take, namely:

Invest in research and development for the next shinny times

Analyze and know your competitors’ Aquilles heels and act upon them in a clever way (think on the fringes; be a parallel thinker?)

Identify critical suppliers and distributors and identify the risk associated to them in the economic environment and how it could affect you

Think carefully about your talent needs and be very careful so you don’t send the most talented people to you competitor’s den

Tags: economic downturn, innovation, Michael Roberto, R&D, recession, research and development, Steve Jobs