Apple CEO Tim Cook is at the helm of the trillion-dollar consumer technology company. He has changed the dynamics of Apple and for that, he took one or two leadership qualities from his predecessor, Steve Jobs. Cook said he admired how Jobs held everyone at the company.
In an interview with GQ, Cook said no one can be Steve Jobs and he admires how he pushed everyone to their limits to get the best out of them.
“I knew I couldn’t be Steve [when I became CEO]. I don’t think anybody could be Steve. I think he was a once-in-a-hundred-years kind of individual, an original by any stretch of the imagination. And so what I had to do was to be the best version of myself,” Cook was quoted as saying by CNBC.
Jobs expected innovation from everyone
Cook noted that he admired how Jobs held everyone — whether they worked in engineering, marketing or any other department — to the same standard of creativity and boundary pushing.
“One of the things I loved about him was he didn’t expect innovation out of just one group in the company or creativity out of one group. He expected it everywhere in the company,” Cook said.
Cook was the company’s chief operating officer before he took the role of CEO in 2011 and saw the company’s worldwide sales and operations.
“When we were running operations, we tried to be innovative in operations and creative in operations, just like we were creative elsewhere. We fundamentally had to be in order to build the products that we were designing,” he added.
Apple under Cook
Cook at Vox Media’s 2022 Code Conference in Los Angeles said that “Jobs was the best teacher I ever had, by far. Those teachings live on, not just in me, in a whole bunch of people who are [at Apple].”
In an interview with GQ, Cook said no one can be Steve Jobs and he admires how he pushed everyone to their limits to get the best out of them.
“I knew I couldn’t be Steve [when I became CEO]. I don’t think anybody could be Steve. I think he was a once-in-a-hundred-years kind of individual, an original by any stretch of the imagination. And so what I had to do was to be the best version of myself,” Cook was quoted as saying by CNBC.
Jobs expected innovation from everyone
Cook noted that he admired how Jobs held everyone — whether they worked in engineering, marketing or any other department — to the same standard of creativity and boundary pushing.
“One of the things I loved about him was he didn’t expect innovation out of just one group in the company or creativity out of one group. He expected it everywhere in the company,” Cook said.
Cook was the company’s chief operating officer before he took the role of CEO in 2011 and saw the company’s worldwide sales and operations.
“When we were running operations, we tried to be innovative in operations and creative in operations, just like we were creative elsewhere. We fundamentally had to be in order to build the products that we were designing,” he added.
Apple under Cook
Cook at Vox Media’s 2022 Code Conference in Los Angeles said that “Jobs was the best teacher I ever had, by far. Those teachings live on, not just in me, in a whole bunch of people who are [at Apple].”
The iPhone, which is considered to be the most successful product among all other Apple offerings, was launched under Jobs. Cook also saw a number of successful launches such as Airpods, Apple Watch and the M1 processor.
The company is also expected to launch a mixed-reality headset later this year. Cook also expanded the company in India and Apple will soon get its flagship store in Mumbai. The company has also expanded its services such as the Apple TV+ platform.
