IMO what the article talks about is the business model, not the culture, they are two separate things - not entirely separate, but mostly. Business model is Apple shipping devices and Google providing ad-supported services over the Internet. Culture is how in one company you can't push changes to the central repository without a code review which might take a couple of days, while in another you can work whichever way you please but if things break you're expected to fix them on Sunday at 3 AM.

Like the business model, culture is certainly influenced by the people at the top, though I think it's defined by a somewhat larger number of early employees, and it's harder to change once established, compared to the business model. Both affect performance in the market, but it's not as straightforward to analyze, even in hindsight, how exactly culture affects market performance relatively to the business model where in hindsight it's perfectly clear.