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Comment by mombul | Hacker News Reader

So the fact that Apple's share price has increased 1,200% since he took over is just a coincidence?

To be fair Apple was already a giant rolling ball of success, and they have historically had an ingrained culture of caring deeply about their products above all else.

Any decisions that would affect their trajectory will get a ton of deliberation from a lot of smart people; i.e. there wouldn't need to be a ton of input or ingenuity from the CEO to see returns like those from Apple, imho.

Not to say that Cook isn't great or that it wouldn't be difficult to achieve that success.

So many companies have flatlined after a new CEO took over, think Microsoft after Ballmer took over. So I think there is some difficulty involve.

I guess my point is that the leadership within Apple is a lot more diffuse than typical;

I believe most of Apple's value is from delivering a high degree of consistency and polish; owing to its culture of relentlessly developing the UX of their products.

Therefore the CEO's primary roles at Apple would be to maintain that culture, steer the ship into new segments, and discern when the public will care about those segments.

I think Cook has done a decent job of that.

Making it all possible with RnD and supply chain is another story, but also where Cook is known to excel so maybe I'm underselling him. Jobs had Cook so presumably Cook would find a Cook if he weren't Cook.

I don't know much about Microsoft but Balmer was definitely taking over a different beast than Cook.

If I let my bias show I'd say Microsoft's value is from developing technology just enough to set up bill gates for customers :p

Apple was a giant rolling ball of success when John Sculley took over, too.

But that sure didn't last.

Were the shares previously nosediving before he took over?

I think it's laughable to assume that it was only Tim Cook who contributed to that. Indeed, where would we be if it wasn't for these handful of superhuman geniuses.

During his tenure the market cap has increased by about $2 trillion. How much of that value has Cook captured? A very small %. Perhaps even smaller than his actual contribution! You could easily make the argument that Cook is being exploited by the shareholders.

What has been the remarkably great move from Apple in the last 10 years? Develop their iTunes store to provide more media and bring in-house productions to have a more of a moat? Develop their own silicon to decrease reliance on others? Develop products that can take advantage of their strengths, a la Tags? Move into services as most of the world is getting more Apple-product saturated? Extend ownership of their product lifecycles, by being hostile towards 3rd party repairs? Offer financial services to allow the less fortunate to obtain your products? I don't want to detract from the respect that's due for these moves, but they are not that far off the beaten path for a market leader looking to solidify it's position in it's place. Most other improvements to their products and services have been incremental. Of course, there is something to be said about not straying from the light, as other companies have done. However, I do think that Apple's valuation is somewhat tied to the buying power of the world, and on the timescale's we're looking at, more and more people are gaining access to Apples products as the world economy improves. All of these are great things, and of course I'm talking with hindsight, but to me these all feel like strategies that seem somewhat obvious and will generally work wonders when executed from the position of a market leader.

Maybe, maybe not, but I think the idea is that it's hard to say with certainty. Apple is large and complex enough that any number of factors could have lead to that share price increase. My personal opinion is that probably yeah he had a good chunk to do with it. But it's hard to say that with certainty, it's certainly worth discussing and not taking for granted.

Apple's share price has increased more than 12,000% since Foxconn received its first order from Apple. Is that just a coincidence?

Well, the same thing has happened for Amazon and Google, so… yes?

Of course you can argue that the wrong leader would have torpedoed the company.

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