Unlike Jobs, Mr Cook sees beyond the firm. If successful, they too may come to define his legacy.īut Mr Cook’s biggest contribution may well be in how Apple interacts with the world. It is an open secret that Apple has been working on both “iGlasses” and an “iCar” for years. The latest, called “M1”, which now powers some of Apple’s laptops, is a technological marvel that appears to overcome the trade-off between speed and battery life. Apple has doubled down on developing its own processors, for example. Mr Cook has not merely expanded upon Jobs’s innovations. Apple devices now form an “ecosystem”, meaning that they work seamlessly together, inducing consumers to own several. Even newer products such as Apple’s Watch and AirPods can be seen as extensions of the mighty iPhone, which still generates nearly half of the firm’s revenue. Its processor is 5,000% more powerful than it was a decade ago. Underlings know to have good answers at the ready.
Whereas Jobs regularly managed by tantrum, Mr Cook often has done so by spreadsheet and probing questions. At the helm Mr Cook has quietly continued the job he was first hired for in 1998: refining Apple’s supply chain and making the firm ever more efficient. Rather than chasing the next big thing or rejigging the organisation, as Jobs did on his return to Apple in 1997, Mr Cook has pushed for constant improvement. But Mr Cook has also succeeded because he did the opposite of what Jobs would have done in his position. During his second almost 14-year stint at Apple, Jobs added only $343.6bn to the firm’s market valuation, or $24.7bn a yearĪpple’s success under Mr Cook stems from several forces that have powered the tech industry-and thus the global economy-in the past decade: globalisation, the mobile revolution and network effects. They also surpass the achievement of Warren Buffett, who has been running Berkshire Hathaway for nearly 45 years. Mr Cook’s numbers beat the value generated by Jeff Bezos, who retired as Amazon’s chief executive in July, over his 24 years in charge. No chief executive in history has created as much total shareholder value. Since he took the helm of Apple from Steve Jobs ten years ago, the firm’s market capitalisation has increased by more than $2trn. Think of Steve Ballmer, who succeeded Bill Gates at Microsoft, and Kevin Rollins, who took over from Michael Dell at Dell Technologies, who returned a few years later. THE TECHNOLOGY industry is littered with managers who have tried and failed to emulate successful founders.
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