In 1985, the board of Apple Computer asked co-founder Steve Jobs to resign. That decision proved so catastrophic, that 12 years later, on the verge of bankruptcy, the company brought Jobs back as CEO. He took the struggling company he helped build and turned it into the most valuable corporation in the world, as Apple Inc.
Now he’s leaving again, and on his own terms this time. His medical condition seems to have prompted him to inform the board that he can no longer fulfill his duties as CEO. As the man responsible for a seemingly endless series of successful and industry-changing products (the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the App Store), the first instinct is to assume that the end of the Jobs era is going to be a major change. I wouldn’t be too sure though.
Jobs has been a powerful force at Apple for over a decade, true, but that also means he’s had the time to create the team who can build on what he’s created. Tim Cook, Apple’s new CEO, is Jobs’s hand-picked successor. He’ll work with essentially the same team he did twice before when serving as interim CEO while Jobs underwent medical treatment. Cook isn’t likely to be the guy who wants to change the path his predecessor set the company on, because he worked as hard as anyone to help build that vision in the first place.
More importantly, Apple is no longer the nimble little upstart it was in the 1970s. It’s become the biggest company on Earth, and a ship that large takes a long time to turn. Apple’s product plans for the next two years are likely fixed already, with supply chain deals already worked out (largely by one COO Tim Cook, as it happens). Even if Cook is looking to significantly change the direction of the company, there’s simply no way he can do it quickly at this point.
There are concerns that Cook may lack the vision or salesmanship that were so important to Jobs’s success at Apple. Perhaps that’s true, or perhaps Cook never had a moment to shine in areas that Jobs handled so well already. Either way, it’s not yet time to be too concerned about those factors for one simple reason. Jobs isn’t actually leaving Apple. His health may prevent him from taking the hands-on, day-to-day role of CEO, but his resignation letter also asked the board to appoint him its chairman. Jobs is not the sort to sit back and watch when he can help the company he clearly loves. His new role will certainly be different, but it will just as certainly be involved. I don’t see Apple’s vision of the future changing while Jobs is still there.
The day of the post-Jobs era will eventually come, perhaps sooner than we’d like to see. But I don’t believe this resignation is the beginning of it. The Jobs era is going to last well beyond the man’s tenure as CEO. He’s left an incredible mark on this company, so there’s time left for “one more thing.”
Great piece and I couldn’t agree more. The analogy of a ship is perfect, a company this size does not change overnight.
Yep, I agree too. I recently read somewhere that the typical large business changing CEOs doesn’t really go a new direction for at least 5 years. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Apple has an internal road-map spanning 4 or 5 years. (Look how long they’ve had some of their products in secret development before their release in the past. They experimented with phones and tablet devices for MANY years before announcing them. Even the switch from PowerPC to Intel processors was only able to happen so apparently quickly and smoothly because it turned out they were secretly writing OS X for both platforms since its inception.)
If anything, the biggest short-term change I see is a decreasing level of energy and excitement over “keynote speeches”. Jobs clearly had a gift in discussing new products in a way that really excited people and made them anxious to buy them. Most of Apple’s other speakers I’ve listened to (including Tim Cook) don’t have that kind of charisma. I think many of Apple’s bigger product announcements will sell themselves anyway, but the problem will come during slower periods. Steve could take a minor iPhoto software update and make a crowd feel it was a really big deal. Not sure anyone else there can pull that off?