There’s an argument to be made that Tim Cook is both the greatest CEO of the 21st century and the least exciting one.
Cook, who is stepping down as CEO of Apple in favour of hardware engineering boss John Ternus, ends a 15-year tenure in which Apple’s market cap grew by a staggering USD3.7 trillion ($5.15 trillion), and its product roadmap by somewhat less.
Cook looked at the house Steve Jobs built and correctly diagnosed what it actually was underneath the glossy myth that his predecessor created.
Jobs thought he was running a visionary product company changing humanity one silicon chip at a time. Cook saw something more banal and more profitable: a luxury consumer business with a globally unmatched brand, pricing power that would embarrass Hermès and a vast, captive customer base who were ready to spend big on shiny things.
