“We don’t know what’s wrong with Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive. But it’s got to be serious. You don’t take a six-month leave of absence, as he is, just because you’ve got a stomachache,” Saul Hansell reports for The New York Times.
“So that raises the question, for investors and customers, about whether Apple’s amazing record of innovation and financial success are at risk while Mr. Jobs is on leave — and even more so if he never returns,” Hansell writes.
“In the short run, Apple is on a roll… But the risk to Apple is far higher if we imagine the grim possibility that Steve Jobs is unable to return to work… the essence of Steve Jobs — the obsessive visionary who involves himself in the smallest details of Apple’s products and advertising — has fostered what is in effect a corporate operating system that will need to be completely upgraded whenever a successor is named,” Hansell writes. “After all, however talented the executives at Apple, one skill they all need is an understanding of how to work with, and when appropriate, defer to, the whims of Steve Jobs.”
Hansell writes, “It’s almost impossible to imagine the next chief executive of Apple having the same sort of autocratic and impulsive personality… [however] Steve Jobs can be replaced, even if he can’t be duplicated. There are lots of ways to run successful and innovative companies. And Apple couldn’t be in better shape, financially or in its public image, to withstand a change.”
Hansell writes, “But the inevitable process of reworking the entire corporate operating system, changing the culture of how decisions get made and how executives relate to each other, entails enough risk that investors and customers are right to wonder whether Apple after Steve Jobs may lose its way.”
Full article here.
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