Steve Jobs, forever?

Today I woke up with the news of Steve Jobs’ death. For all of us with cancer cases in our families, the final outcome of Jobs’ struggle with cancer was utmostly clear, but nonetheless the news is, as always, shocking.

I am part of that generation that has lived through the entire Apple lifecyle. In 1984, that great initial year, I was 12. I grew up with Apple, from teenager to early adulthood. I struggled with becoming an adult similar to Apple struggling to find its way in a computer industry that took a different path than Jobs would have liked. From the early beginnings of personal computing, he was focused on excellence, thinking different. He almost bet the company on it. Almost lost everything, but not his persistent view on a world of innovation and excellence. He left the company, starting something new. And came back. From there on, the rest is well known. He showed me, and many others, to keep trying, to be passionate about your fundamental beliefs, to persist. To find a way to make things happen. What a big lesson.

Today is a day we are mourning the death of an icon of this generation. And it should also be a day to look into the future. What will Apple be without Jobs? Apple itself today seems to stand still. Their website is a message that is breath-holding. A tribute to that man that made Apple what it is today. And a a signal to the world. It is pure Apple spirit.

Doubts about the future of Apple will be around for the next months, until they surprise us again. Many still think that Apple won’t be – cannot be- the same without Jobs. Some already argue that the presentation earlier this week is a signal of a new weaker Apple. All of these fears emanate from the belief that Apple is, despite its size, still depending on the visionary strong leadership of Jobs. Reasons for that are many. To start with, the IT industry in general is an industry which relies more than other industries on strong leaders: Microsoft and Ballmer, Oracle and Ellison, Cisco and Chambers, Facebook and Zuckerberg, and Amazon and Bezos. Hard to think of any of these companies without their leaders.

But then, Apple has gone through a profound transformation over the past decade. Then, it had the vision and the great ideas, but was very weak on execution. Products were arriving late to the market, and the company was often slammed for a low rhythm of innovation. The solution to this situation came with Tim Cook. He has been the main architect of an organization with an efficient and flexible supply chain around the innovative capacity and secrecy that is required in any organization that relies on surprising its customers again and again. He has been for years the soul of the day-to-day operations, and it is only logical that he now Apple’s main executive. And he is not alone.

In the IT industry, we have been highlighting for years that a product is only as good as the ecosystem to which it caters, hence highlighting the need to develop the complementors. And Cook has great complementors. To start with, Jonathan Ive and Scott Forstall, in charge of industrial design and software, respectively. They are the needed complements that fuel the innovation pipeline. Both are experts and visionaries in their field, they have grown with and shaped the Apple culture over the past years. And one should not forget about Ron Johnson, head of Retail. He’s the one that came up with Apple’s distinctive selling approach, creating all those store experiences that we have become to love.

Hence, Apple today is a company with a very robust organization, with clear and distinctive roles that has innovation built into every part of its functions. They have become best in class not only in product innovation, but also in execution, and they may think more than anybody else into every detail of a long innovation process. Maybe Jobs’ biggest innovation has been not its products, but the current Apple. An organization that has his spirit not through his leader, but through its structure. Wouldn’t that be the greatest legacy that Jobs could possibly leave us?