He has since left Apple after spending five years as the company's senior director of worldwide iPhone product marketing and is currently a general partner in Opus Capital, a venture capital outfit.
He was in Kuala Lumpur recently to speak on innovation at the Malaysian Media Conference 2010.
"My role in Apple at the time was to orchestrate every aspect on products we worked on from the design, functionality of the device and right down to the marketing," said Borchers.
His biggest undertaking was to oversee the marketing of the original iPhone and its subsequent models, all the way up to last year's iPhone 3GS.
When it came to marketing the iPhone, Borchers said Apple made a conscious decision to say very little about the product.
Instead the company wanted customers to get to know about the product through videos and tutorials.
"One of the things about the iPhone that made it so successful is how it is not just a piece of technology but rather an experience," he said during an interview.
"People became engaged with it and really fell in love with it."
"Obviously, since Apple had a following it helped to get the initial buzz on the product but what makes a product great, whether you are looking at the iPad, iPod or the latest iPhone, comes back to great experiences people have when using the device," he added.
Borchers further explained that Apple had to think out of the box when designing the iPhone because if it had looked at the best product on the market and improve on it, it would have just ended up with a mediocre product.
He believes a successful product need not be the one with most features but one that has fewer features and does them well.
"Most tech companies measure the capability of a product by its features, but truly innovative companies don't do that. They look at what is the benefit the feature provides, focus on things that really matter to people and make sure that they work well," he said.
So how can companies be innovative? He says that being innovative doesn't mean you to be the first product on the market. He mentioned the Apple Newton tablet device as an example of a product that did many things but didn't do them well.
"The Palm Pilot on the other hand was a successful product that did fewer things but did them extraordinarily well. In the same way, the original iPhone was criticised for lacking lots of features, it focused on a few key features that worked well," he says.
He warns companies that innovation doesn't stop at just one success as they need continue to invent and compete with themselves.
"Companies need to be their own harshest critics and shouldn't be complacent with the success they have today but think about the direction of the future," Borchers said.
By CHONG JINN XIUNG
intech@thestar.com.my
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