Apple CEO Tim Cook missed out on winning TIME Person Of The Year 2012, with the accolade instead falling to President Barack Obama. 15 year old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai came in second, with Cook third.
TIME:
He inherited the most valuable company in the world from one of the greatest innovators in history. In 2012 he made Apple his own.
[…]
His critics say Cook lacks a true technologist’s vision, but it would be more accurate to say that he has yet to show his hand. Apple finished 2012 with a triumphant record of innovation, but it was innovation with a small i, as in incremental. That’s good enough for an ordinary company, but it’s not what made Apple worth more than Exxon Mobil.
The essence of Apple is the quantum leap, the unexpected sideways juke into a heretofore unnoticed and underexploited market — personal computers, digital music players, smart phones, tablet computers. Maybe the next stop is televisions; that’s certainly where the rumor mill is going. But the test for Cook will be to seek out a new category that’s vulnerable to disruption and disrupt the hell out of it.
I ask Cook if he would do that — if that would continue to be Apple’s modus operandi going forward. He smiles, seductively as always, and says, “Yes. Yes. Most definitely.”
That last bit will, for me at least, be the key factor in how I view Cook. Will Apple reinvent another product category? It hasn’t yet happened, but hopefully within a couple of years, it will have.
Congratulations to Barack Obama on winning the prize though, he deserves it.
