Extensive Tim Cook Interview With Businessweek Editor Josh Tyrangiel

Tim Cook:

“So just to be clear, I wouldn’t call that a process. Creativity and innovation are something you can’t flowchart out. Some things you can, and we do, and we’re very disciplined in those areas. But creativity isn’t one of those. A lot of companies have innovation departments, and this is always a sign that something is wrong when you have a VP of innovation or something. You know, put a for-sale sign on the door.”

This is an interesting perspective:

“Think about it. We changed the vast majority of our iPhone in a day. We didn’t kind of — you know, change a little bit here or there. iPad, we changed the entire lineup in a day. The most successful product in consumer electronics history, and we change it all in a day and go with an iPad mini and a fourth- generation iPad. Who else is doing this? 80 percent of our revenues are from products that didn’t exist 60 days ago. Is there any other company that would do that?”

(You can read the same interview on Businessweek’s website, broken across 11 (!) web pages, or read it all on a single page on Bloomberg’s site.)

★ Thursday, 6 December 2012