Inside Apple - Book Report

“Inside Apple”

Adam Lashinsky

Book Report

In the past fifteen years, since Steve Jobs returned as CEO, Apple has transformed from a dying company with only ninety days of cash left, into the largest technology company in the world with a hundred billion dollars in cash reserves. Although Apple’s achievements are quite public and endless fodder for the media, exactly how it has accomplished this feat is not widely understood. This is because Apple is one of the most secretive companies in the world. In his book “Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired - And Secretive - Company Really Works” author Adam Lashinsky attempts to uncover the how’s and whys of Apple’s success in the crowded and typically low-margin tech industry.

Lashinsky begins the book by addressing the significance of this period for Apple. Steve Jobs, the man credited with single-handedly rescuing Apple in 1997, passed away just months before the book was published and has been replaced with former COO Tim Cook. The question that launches the book is this: can Apple continue to maintain its trajectory as the maker of the world’s most innovative gadgets without the man who founded it? He begins to investigate this question by looking at Apple’s organizational chart.

The first critical observation is how small the executive team is in proportion to the size of the company. There are roughly 70 VPs, of which a handful of the most influential have direct access to the CEO. Project teams are small, the lines of responsibility are clearly drawn, and those responsible for the success of each project are held strictly accountable. Demotion within Apple is far more common than promotion. This type of corporate structure is designed to put a lot of pressure on very few people. This corporate structure is very successful because it focuses the company on making fewer things, but the reason this practice is not widely adopted is obvious: it is a human pressure cooker. Within this unusual, tightly vertically-integrated structure, emerges the first ethical question surrounding the culture at Apple.

Everyone knows that Apple is externally very secretive, but few realize how Apple’s internal affairs are kept secret even from its own high ranking employees. Access to project information is strictly on a need-to-know basis. Even though Apple executives publicly tout Apple’s ability to bring teams together in creative ways that no other company can, in reality employees are often at first frightened -- and later conditioned -- to keep their mouths shut about their work to everybody: coworkers, friends, and even close family. This creates a lot of resentment when a manager suddenly finds his key card does not work in an area that his subordinates’ cards do. When the trend in the corporate