- Jobs has been many things, but he has been more iconic than anything else. He put creating a dent in the universe through innovation in teach above anything else. It was more of a at whatever cost approach, and he finally managed to do it. With that he created Apple and brought it to a supreme power status. After that he did something that surprised me completely, like totally completely. He hands over the baton, to someone who is the exact opposite. Forget at whatever costs, this guy wants to do stuff at absolutely “NO COST” to the environment, labor welfare, diversity, privacy,pubic good and yada yada. And guess what, not only does he achieve that, he almost 4x times the market cap of the company and makes it the ICON of SUSTAINABILITY. This book is an incredible book of ideas and values, but sadly unlike the one on jobs, it doesn’t have to make “stop in your tracks” kind of statements. While jobs usually followed the shock and awe approach, Cook is more of a less talking more doing kinda guy. Here are some highlights from the book.
- Post its stock repurchase, Apple had 267.2 billion $ in cash reserves. The US government had only 271 billion $ of cash in hand.
- Jobs used to get the best out of people by setting teams off each other. Cook gets the best of them by making them collaborate better.
- Most people are known for what they do, some are known better for what they don’t. Cook was a blank slate known for what he wasn’t that what he was.
- Jobs connected a lot of dots from his other interests such as calligraphy, to bring amazing fonts to Apple. Cook’s dots because of being from the south & gay made him the most inclusive CEO on the planet, which didn’t deal with, but celebrated diversity.
- You have to do well, by doing good. If you want a pure ROI business sell the Stock.
- You should leave things and people better than you find them.
- Spent most of his awake hours working.
- Had a small group of friends where he enjoyed socializing, but he was most likely to be found after hours working.
- Just in Time manufacturing was something that Cook & Jobs always came together at.
- Cook lived alone in the city.
- Cook as made senior VP worldwide operations just at the age of 37.
- Cook hated inventory with the same zeal that Jobs hated shoddy design.
- Cooks reduced warehouses and brought down inventory from 30 days to 2. They began to ship directly from the manufacturer.
- Everyone at Apple is a specialist except Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.
- While Jobs was a diet fanatic, Cook is a fitness fanatic.
- A solid supply chain can only be an asset to innovation and design. Another example is Zara.
- Cook thought his privacy was absolutely essential to him, more so because he was gay. This culture made Apples products the most secure in the market and also made sure that users data is not their product !
- Apple’s data centres, retail stores in the US and offices around the world are powered by clean energy and not dirty coal.
- Apple has found a carbon-free way to smelt aluminium. The old way of smelting aluminium causes 21% of the greenhouse gases that come from the industrial sector.
- Apple may just have innovated the way mass aluminium is produced with Alcoa and Rio Tinto.
- Apple has now emerged as the greenest tech companies in the world with a closed ended supply chain.
- Apple does not want your data. Apple’s business model is not based on data like Google or Facebook. One of the chore characters of Cook as well as the company is the innate respect for one’s privacy.
- The last 3 known areas of massive interest for apple are driverless cars, healthcare and the TV.
- Cooks biggest contribution to the tech industry would be the ability to do good by also doing well.
This book was not as exciting as the one on Jobs but is probably way more important than the one on Jobs. Sustainability is usually boring, but guess what, the same thing is rapidly becoming cool and the non-descript Cook seems to have found the new trendline in cool and is absolutely killing it there. Interesting times 😉