Definition
“Skate Where the Puck is Going” is a strategic principle, originally a maxim of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, used by Steve Jobs to justify making aggressive, forward-looking technical choices that ignore established industry norms in favor of where the market will inevitably move.
Why It Matters
This principle is the ‘long-term compass’ of innovation; it justifies the high-risk decision to abandon profitable but obsolete technologies in favor of the next standard, ensuring that a company remains the disruptor rather than the disrupted.
Core Concepts
- Anticipatory Design: Identifying technical components that are nearing obsolescence (e.g., floppy disks, CD trays, Flash) and removing them before the competition does.
- High-Risk/High-Reward: Leading the transition to a new standard (e.g., USB, Wi-Fi, touchscreens) while the “puck” is still in transit, accepting short-term user friction for long-term dominance.
- The iMac Case: The 1998 iMac eliminated the floppy drive—then the industry standard—to focus on the Internet and CD-ROMs. While controversial at launch, it correctly predicted the transition to networked storage.
- Iterative Leapfrogging: Sometimes “skating where the puck is going” fails in the short term (e.g., the slot-load drive delay) but forces the company to innovate even more radically to catch up (e.g., the iPod/iTunes move).