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Influencer Column :Tim Cook

Since 2011 August, Before being named CEO Tim was Apple’s chief operating officer whose sales of iPhones and sales activities, and service and support have made it a company with one of the world's largest market capitalizations. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a vital role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.

Cook owns about 3.3 million shares of Apple, far less than 1 percent stake; Cook sold hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of shares for annually. Prior to joining Apple, Tim was vice president of Corporate Materials for Compaq and was responsible for procuring and managing for all Compaq’s product inventory.

Cook joined Apple in 1998, having worked briefly at PC maker Compaq and for 12 years at IBM, in recently as director of North American Fulfillment where he led manufacturing and distribution functions for IBM’s Personal Computer Company in North and Latin America. Tim earned an MBA from Duke University, where he was a Fuqua Scholar, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University.

Joining Apple

Cook said that within minutes of being interviewed by Steve Jobs, Cook knew he wanted to join the company and specifically that he wanted to help resurrect Apple. Steve Jobs had begun the turnaround of Apple when he rejoined in 1996. Famously, it was the iMac that began the climb back from the brink of bankruptcy. That visibility of Jony Ive's and the Design Team's work was crucial, yet the comparatively invisible role Cook took was at least as important. This was despite his not being seen as a "product person" consumed with design issues.

It would also have been unpopular, as it was by Cook's choice that Apple closed factories and shuttered warehouses. Instead, Apple outsourced manufacturing and began the same well-controlled production that it has to this day. Where previously Apple had made computers that would sit in warehouses for months before being sold, Cook got those months down to days. Cook wasn't the only person to see the benefit of this. Before Cook joined Apple, PC maker Dell had pursued the same model with the logic that having few computers in warehouses meant the ability to adapt.

Investing smartly

Equally most important as managing a stockpile-preventing process was Apple's need to predict sales. We are now familiar with Apple selling out of devices on launch day and that is as much about the benefit for advertising its success as it is saying the predictions failed.

However, that prediction for demand is treated so seriously that there is an entire department at Apple that works on it. The current head of retail, Deirdre O'Brien, was instrumental in demand prediction for much of her three decades at Apple. It’s not just about guessing how many 5G iPhones will be sold, it is about knowing what technology Apple will need and when.

Tim Cook, and with the benefit of greater financial stability, Apple would take the unusual step of making very long-term investments in technology such as flash memory. Getting that right meant not only that Apple would have the supplies that it was going to need in its iPods and iPhone, but that other companies would not. Consequently, Cook's work in streamlining and growing Apple became very well known in the industry, but it was not until 2009 that he really became anything of a public figure.

Tim Cook becomes CEO

In several years, Cook acted as overall CEO in the first of what would be three health-related absences by Steve Jobs. While Jobs continued to make decisions for the company, Cook actually ran it. Before Jobs's death in 2011 and at the Apple co-founders suggestion that Cook was formally made CEO of the company.

This made him the seventh Apple CEO, and he's been in the position for nearly ten years. John Scully lasted for ten years as CEO and Steve Jobs had the title for 14. It is still the case that Sculley ultimately had the most detrimental effect on Apple and that Jobs had the most visibly successful. But Cook's tenure has seen the CEO role change more than ever.

Cook was taken time to recruit some key people,  like Angela Ahrendts, who ran Apple retail for five years. Cook is also reportedly been swift to cut people when needed. Both as an individual and as CEO, Cook has been far more outspoken on social issues than any of his predecessors. Where Jobs may perhaps have cultivated the public perception of him as the face of Apple, Cook has directly presented himself as such over issues ranging from privacy and security to sexuality. 

Investments outside Apple

Unsurprisingly, Cook concentrates his efforts and attention nearly exclusively on Apple, and issues where the company plays a part. Cook does, nevertheless, regularly work out at a gym.  It was a chance use of a prototype shower head there that prompted him to make his only known personal investment. Since 2015, Cook invested money in the shower company Nebia and reportedly takes an active interest in advising the firm, too.

Personal life

In 2014, Cook came out as gay specifically to use his position to help others. Cook CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he/she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone and inspire people to insist on their equality," Cook said, ‘then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy’. In recently, Cook has seen criticism over Apple's resistance to providing backdoor access to iPhones for the FBI and for how he failed to factually correct President Trump during a joint press conference.

Nevertheless, whether one disagrees with Cook or not, the former resistance is in line with his and Apple's stated position about protecting our privacy. And the latter is a shrewd politician who knows very well what battles like DACA are ones he cares about. More than Steve Jobs ever did, Tim Cook now also speaks publicly about issues where technology intersects with issues of politics and especially privacy.