Jobs told Cook: don't ask "What would Steve do?"
Tim Cook was told by his former boss not to ask "What would Steve do?" in running the company, just to do what was right.
Rather than worrying about what Steve Jobs would've done, the former Apple boss told current CEO Tim Cook to "just do what's right," Cook told Apple staff, according to Bloomberg.
As he took the microphone at the memorial to Jobs held at the company's Cupertino campus, Cook said, "Among his last advice he had for me, and for all of you, was to never ask what he would do. 'Just do what's right.'"
Jobs' intention was that the company should avoid the fate of Disney after the death of its founder, where "everyone spent all their time thinking and talking about what Walt would do."
Considering though that Jobs was initially against third party apps, and admired some people for wanting to build a company without selling out, while ridiculing others, it's anyone's guess what Steve would've done anyway.
According to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at the Yale University School of Management, Cook needs to try not to emulate Jobs. "You've got to be careful you don't create rituals, which are antithetical to Jobs' own approach," Sonnenfeld told Bloomberg. "He was constantly breaking glass and moving forward. Walt Disney was surrounded by a cadre of creative people who were every bit the equal of Jobs' lieutenants, but they became haunted by the question, 'What would Walt do?'"
Jobs told his biographer that Tim Cook wasn't primarily focussed on products. "Tim's not a product person, per se," he told Isaacson. The biography, which went on sale on Monday, also says Jonathan Ive was annoyed when Jobs took credit for his designs.
Yesterday, it was revealed that the man who wrote The Social Network may pen the screenplay for the film of Steve Jobs' life.