Apple's board in a state of transition

While Steve Jobs's passing came with a lot of powerful emotional effects, it did unfortunately arrive with at least one practical effect that has to be dealt with sooner or later: Apple needs a new Chairman of the Board. A few experts say in this Reuters piece that it will probably be a tough choice for Apple to make. On the one hand, Apple's strength is in Jobs' legacy -- the company has to be committed to continuing to follow his vision, because that's what got them where they are today. On the other hand this may be a chance for Apple to diversify its team a bit, and bring in some new personnel who don't have a past history of politics inside the company.

There's of course a third option, which is that Apple's board doesn't appoint a new chairman for a while, instead working on other priorities before taking on the enormous task of filling Jobs's spot. That might be the best option -- before Jobs took on the Chairman of the Board position as he retired, the company didn't have one anyway.

Otherwise, Tim Cook's name is apparently going around as a possible successor, but insiders are saying that as CEO, he's already too busy to take on anything else. We'll have to see -- these next few months will be critical for Apple, as it tries to turn and face the future without the visionary that has pushed it along for so long.

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Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/07/apple-board-idUSN1…

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While Steve Jobs's passing came with a lot of powerful emotional effects, it did unfortunately arrive with at least one practical...

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John Zabba McLean

3 words.. BRING BACK WOZ

October 11 2011 at 2:36 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

digitalsedition

Their best bet is to not appoint anyone to this position. Too much change in the organization will lead to some long term impacts for the sake of short term solutions. There isn't a need for a chairman at the moment so the board shouldn't try to force one yet.

October 09 2011 at 11:06 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rick A

Would love to see the Intuit yokel get the heave-ho. It's an insult having him on the Board. When i was a shareholder, I made it a point to vote against him. Lotta good that did...

October 08 2011 at 2:38 PM Report abuse Permalink +3 rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Rick A's comment

Chris Giddings

You're not kidding. He's been a horrible partner for Apple over the years. None of his 'real' products work well with Macs and haven't felt Mac native for a long time.

Thankfully Intuit bought Mint and give its leadership control over their consumer finance tools and we're seeing some changes there. It will be interesting to see how Quicken and QuickBooks move forward from here.

October 08 2011 at 9:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

j35tar

Any connection with Intuit is an insult to a company that cares anything about it's customers. Hostility to customers is beyond bound and seems to be corporate culture at Intuit.

October 12 2011 at 6:02 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jharrop

Is Jonny Ive on the board already? You want someone with vision and an understanding of what Apple stands for? He's it.

October 08 2011 at 12:30 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to jharrop's comment

Jason Martin

You have no idea what a Board of Directors (and specifically the Chairman) does. Do you?

October 08 2011 at 2:36 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joshua Miller

I thought that there was no chairman of the board at Apple before Jobs took is following his resignation. It would follow that they don't need one following Jobs' death.

October 07 2011 at 11:57 PM Report abuse Permalink +1 rate up rate down Reply

Chuck La Tournous

"One practical effect that has to be dealt with sooner or later: Apple needs a new Chairman of the Board."

I'm not sure that's true. I don't think the Apple board had a chairman prior to Steve, and I don't think they necessarily have to choose one now.

October 07 2011 at 10:39 PM Report abuse Permalink +4 rate up rate down Reply

Tony

"that's what got them where they are today"

This isn't entirely true. Mr. Jobs would be the first person to tell you that "What got us here isn't going to get us there." There are milestones when growing a business and most of the time the driving force must be flexible enough to change to get from one to another. I read a previous article here stating that many of the products/services to be released from Apple for the foreseeable future will still be ones that came from Steve Jobs vault. They have some breathing room and some lead-time the need to take advantage of it .

His ghost cannot run the company. Now is the time for the board and Tim Cook to start thinking big, grow his internal staff and bring on new talent that will fill the considerable creative gap left from Steve's passing.

The real trick is to keep the spirit, the heart of Steve Jobs as the core values of the company and not be distracted by garbage like they did in the early 90's. The best way to do that is to promote from within and recruit board members from the executive team. They understood and supported the short-term vision of the company as set forth by Steve Jobs, and they have the chops to help innovate and push forward beyond the roadmap Steve left for them... Eventually they will have to go off the reservation.

October 07 2011 at 8:35 PM Report abuse Permalink +3 rate up rate down Reply

JohnJohn

I just started a project...or I would do it.

October 07 2011 at 7:23 PM Report abuse Permalink -1 rate up rate down Reply

tcrown

I suspect that this decision was made some time ago by Steve, Tim and the board like all the other things that Jobs and the board have put in place for this day.

October 07 2011 at 6:37 PM Report abuse Permalink +3 rate up rate down Reply