Tim Cook on people, culture, and values


More good stuff from Fast Company in an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook:

You have to build a company that commands the ability to recruit the best and brightest. We are our people and that's the sum of what we are able to do. We're about people. People ultimately do everything here. Yes, we have IP. Yes, we have some real estate, but at the end of the day people can rip that off. People are the soul of the place. So how do you recruit the best people? That's something we spend time on, to make sure we can do the best we can do. That's the leadership and the management of the place.

More important than all that is the culture. Culture is the attraction of Apple. If you're on the outside, why do you want to join Apple? You want to join Apple because you want to change the world. That was the attraction back in the garage, and that's the attraction now. Now, the things 21-year-olds are looking for is different from back in 1978.

Good stuff. And on values:
I don't do it to recruit. I do it because I really believe it. Because I deeply believe. My belief is that companies should have values like people do. This company has values. Just like we have to pick and choose what to work on with products, we have to be very careful about what we pick. Because picking [one cause] means you're not picking something else, and you can't pick too many and do them with quality. With most of the public things we pick, there will be an intersection between the thing and our products. The environment is an example. We believe deeply in clean air and clean water. Doesn't sound too controversial. Well, we make products, we manufacture things, we have data centers, so there's a direct intersection there.

If you're wondering why would Apple want to build an electric car, think of it through the lens of those two quotes. An electric car could reshape economies and even geopolitics and that seems to jive with what Cook is saying here.