I clearly hit a nerve last week when I compared Meg Whitman’s moves at HP to Tim Cook’s at Apple. I do sincerely think Tim Cook was set up to fail. Steve Jobs didn’t hire Cook to replace him — he hired him to do the jobs he didn’t want to do. This is why a lot of great companies slide. The existing CEOs see replacement candidates as rivals, so they make sure they don’t have the skills or otherwise can’t do the CEO’s job. I would argue Cook was safe at Apple because Jobs never saw him as a threat.
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An Analyst's Ad Hominem Hell
Posted by: Rob Enderle April 2, 2012 05:00 AMI clearly hit a nerve last week when I compared Meg Whitman’s moves at HP to Tim Cook’s at Apple. I do sincerely think Tim Cook was set up to fail. Steve Jobs didn’t hire Cook to replace him — he hired him to do the jobs he didn’t want to do. This is why a lot of great companies slide. The existing CEOs see replacement candidates as rivals, so they make sure they don’t have the skills or otherwise can’t do the CEO’s job. I would argue Cook was safe at Apple because Jobs never saw him as a threat.