As development of its AR glasses inches toward the release of v.1, Apple’s innovation engine continues to churn — and now the company is investing in content to drive services revenue in what is expected to be a challenging macro-economic environment.

Apple’s teams of economists, accountants, lobbyists, and managers are feeding back insights from across the planet, which is why the company knows that to make it through the coming years it needs to continue to diversify its business.

Yes, it can’t make Macs and iPads fast enough, and yes, as it works to begin product manufacturing outside of China, the company is horribly exposed to the continued decline in global order. But that doesn’t mean Apple can’t think laterally about how to continue to generate good business in a difficult environment. The company has been working at it for years. Its pivot to services — which accounted for 23.6% of its net revenue in the just gone quarter — is part of this, and it’s an approach any business should explore.

But building a new opportunity takes thought, time, effort, and investment, which is potentially why Apple is spending more on content. Consider how it is aggressively investing in sports content for TV+, reaching deals with MLB and MLS, with others such as the NFL also hotly tipped. Consider, too, the dozens of films and shows reported in the last two weeks alone, and the status of some of the stars it is working with. None of these things come cheap, but once filming ends the content created becomes an Apple product, just like everything else it invests in.

Apple doesn’t seem to be satisfied, yet. Most recently, we learned that it has reached a deal with podcast creator Futuro. That deal reflects the company’s quest to find and film new TV+ shows as it seeks to upsell content to its nearly 860 million existing services subscribers. Apple gains first chance to turn any podcast into a film or TV show under that deal. It clearly intends on building a very large collection of high-quality, watchable, repeatable content.

I know you’ve not come to Computerworld to explore a long hit list of Apple’s media content deals, but this activity represents at least three important traits any digital business can learn from, particularly as every business today is digital.

For example:

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