Creative Technology proves you can't compete on product features

As we said before, piling on product features to out-innovate others stands as the worst business innovation strategy you can do. Creative Technology reported big-time losses yesterday. How big? Try $114 million. Yeah, you read that correctly. Oh, and those are quarterly losses. The company banked itself on competing against Apple's iPod, but with one "clever" idea: integrate an FM radio into the iPod-like Zen Micro. Brilliant. (By the way, why does it resemble the iPod so much? Hmm.) Wait, but that's not all. Also included in the wonderful invention is a voice recorder. So, in short, you take an iPod--then slap on an FM radio and a voice recorder. Wait, an iPod with an FM radio and a voice recorder? What if...oh...some brilliant startup called iGotMoFeatures2.0 decides to take the iPod, slaps on an FM radio and a voice recorder....then brilliantly, to the foot of the device, adds a vacuum cleaner? You get the idea. Competing on product features is a mindless path. Let's hope Creative gets that, and does better next time-around. Seriously now.

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