By Adam Hartung
$150billion. That’s a lot of money. And that’s how much shareholder value has increased at Apple since Steve Jobs returned as CEO. Can you think of any other CEO that has aided shareholder wealth so much? Do any of the cost cutting CEOs in manufacturing companies, financial services firms, or media companies see their share prices rising like Apple’s?
Fortune has declared this “The Decade of Steve“ in its latest publication at Money.CNN.com. Such over-the-top statements are by nature intended to sell magazines (or draw page hits). But the writer makes the valid point that very few leaders impact their industry like Apple has the computer industry, under Jobs leadership. Under his leadership Apple has also had a dramatic impact on the restructuring of two other industries - music and mobile phones/computing. Another company Mr. Jobs founded, Pixar, had a major impact on restructuring the movie business. So with Mr. Jobs as leader, no less than 4 industries have been dramatically changed – and huge value created for shareholders.
No cost-cutting CEO, no “focus on the core” CEO, no “execution” CEO can claim to have made the kind of industry changes that have occurred through businesses led by Steve Jobs. And none of those CEO profiles can say they have created the shareholder value Mr. Jobs has created. While Microsoft’s value has declined the last decade, Apple’s has almost caught up with the innovation-lacking behemoth. Today Apple has more cash and marketable securities than the entire value of the historically supply-chain driven Dell Corporation.
Mr. Jobs is constantly pushing his organization to focus on the future rather than past products and customer requests. It was a decade ago that Apple created its “digital lifestyle” scenario of the future, which opened Apple’s organization to being much more than Macs. Jobs obsesses about competitors and forces his employees to do the same, to make sure Apple doesn’t grow complacent he pushes all products to have leading edge components. Mr. Jobs embraces Disruption, doesn’t fear seeing it in his company, doesn’t mind it amongst his people, and works to create it in his markets. And he makes sure Apple constantly keeps White Space projects open and working to see what works with customers – testing and trying new things all the time in the marketplace.
Almost bankrupt a decade ago, it wasn’t financial re-engineering that saved Apple. It was launching new products that met emerging needs. Apple showed any company can turn itself around if it follows the right steps.Value is not created by cost cutting and waiting for the recession to end. Value is created by seeking innovations and creating an organization that can implement them. Especially Disruptive ones.
Whether Steven Jobs is CEO of the decade or not I can’t answer. But saying he’s one heck of a good role model for what leaders should be doing to create value in their companies is undoubtedly true.
