NYTimes: “If the Steve Jobs era was defined by technological innovation, the Tim Cook period was one of exceptional financial growth.” Ben Thompson: “It’s right that Cook is stepping down now. Jobs might have been responsible for taking Apple from 0 to 1, but it was Cook that took Apple from 1 to $436 billion in revenue and $118 billion in profit last year. It’s a testament to his capabilities and execution that Apple didn’t suffer any sort of post-founder hangover; only time will tell if, along the way, Cook created the conditions for a crash out, by virtue of he himself forgetting The Cook Doctrine and what makes Apple Apple.”
Jim Collins on his new book: “The book explains in detail, but common patterns among subjects include things like “cliffs,” as I mentioned, and “hedgehogs” which readers of my prior books will be familiar with. Then there is the “fog” every subject went through when they were recovering from a cliff event. All subjects were able to focus their “fire” and engage with their “encodings,” which we describe in detail. Financial barriers were dealt with by doing what I call “flipping the arrow of money,” which anyone can do. Then there were things I totally did not expect to find, like how the Roulette Wheel of Life impacted the subjects’ lives, or how subjects often embarked on new endeavors by something I call Extending Out/Circling Back. Also important, many successful subjects chose their responsibilities freely—while the work was often hard, it was freely chosen (not foisted upon them) and that made a huge difference in framing. Finally, we discovered how our subjects fed their Inner Fire for the rest of their lives. Importantly, these patterns are now laid out as criteria that everyone can apply to themselves.”
NYTimes: “Most chief executives are not recognizable to their customers. But when they step into the limelight, the rewards — and the risks — can be great.”
Arnold Kling: “Nurture can be changed by direct intervention. Give the child a different environment. Culture cannot be changed through narrow interventions. Culture evolves. Anyone can try to influence culture, but no one controls its evolution. Attempts by the government to control culture, as in China, tend to do more harm than good. People on the left face a challenge in trying to persuade me to support their basic political outlook. They could continue to argue that nurture can be manipulated to ensure better outcomes for the individual; but for now I see too much evidence that nature and culture matter a great deal.”
