Thread by @startupdaemon

LAW 7: Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit.

Learning from others can spare you a lot of pain and failure in life. Always be wary about your work being stolen.

But the law stands on a much deeper insight about the nature of business and innovation.

1. To create a high-margin product, outsource everything except what you can do better than anyone else.

High-margin products have two essential features: exclusive quality and exclusive branding.

To achieve both, you should pick the best producers for each element of the product – and you can't be the best at everything.

Bestselling authors and broadcasters don't edit, print and market their books and videos themselves.

They rely on armies of employees and subcontractors to edit, produce and market the content – digital or paper.

Yet, the author gets the credit and the lion's share of profits.

In almost any business, it makes sense to outsource inessential tasks to specialists as soon as you can afford someone good.

– Don't be cheap or you will regret it, losing sales or having to redo the work.

– Have standards and give important work only to high-quality producers.

2. Innovation almost never requires inventing anything from scratch. Instead, it's about seeing ways to repurpose what's already lying around.

Great products and innovations usually are recombinations of existing knowledge and technology.

The early patents for Apple's iproducts involved little technological innovation. They were about functionality and brand differentiation.

The iPod and iPhone relied on longstanding technology. Apple's patents were mostly about the designs and interfaces – the user experience.

You don't need to reinvent the wheel to produce breathtaking innovation. The easiest way to innovate is to combine knowledge of different fields:

– sales & marketing
– design
– computing
– media
– manufacturing
– finance

And many others.

To be an innovator, you will probably need to raise money at some point. And reputation is the only real reason to specialize in any one field.

High-level achievement in some skill or profession can help you build the network to have your innovations funded & marketed.

This is one of many threads that will show you the 48 laws in a new light.

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