Timothy Donald Cook is an American business executive, philanthropist, and an industrial engineer. He is the CEO of Apple Inc. and previously served as the company's CEO under its co-founder Steve Jobs.

 

Cook joined Apple in March 1998 as a senior vice president for worldwide operations, and then served as the executive vice president for worldwide sales and operations. He was made the chief executive on August 24, 2011, prior to Jobs' death in October of that year.

 

Since 2011 when he took over Apple, to 2020, Cook doubled the company’s revenue and profit and increased its market value from $348 billion to $1.9 trillion. His total compensation package was around $378 million which makes him the highest-paid CEO in the world.

 

He has been instrumental in taking Apple forward and keeping the brand value intact even through rough periods of time when there seemed to be nothing new to boast about for the revolutionary company.

 

How he made the decision to join Apple when its future looked bleak and how he remained the calm force in the company through every high and every low is now part of a legend.

 

• Early Career

Fresh out of graduate school, Cook embarked on a career in the field of computer technology. He was hired by IBM, where he moved up the ranks to become the corporation's North American fulfillment director, managing manufacturing and distribution functions for IBM's Personal Computer Company in both North and Latin America.

 

Following a 12-year career at IBM, Cook in 1994 became the chief operating officer of the Reseller Division at Intelligent Electronics. After three years, he joined the Compaq Computer Corporation as vice president of corporate materials, charged with procuring and managing product inventory. His time there was short-lived, however; After a six-month stint at Compaq, Cook left for a position at Apple.

 

• Career at Apple

"My most significant discovery so far in my life was the result of one single decision. My decision to join Apple," Cook stated some 12 years after joining the corporation while speaking at Auburn University's commencement ceremony in 2010.

 

However, it wasn't an easy decision: Cook began working for Apple in early 1998, before the company had developed the iMac, iPod, iPhone, or iPad, and when it was seeing declining profits instead of profit growth. According to Cook, prior to accepting his job at Apple, he was actually dissuaded from doing so on the grounds that the company's future looked very bleak.

 

"While Apple did make Macs, the company had been losing sales for years and was commonly considered to be on the verge of extinction," he told the Auburn graduates. "Only a few months before I'd accepted the job at Apple, Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Computer, was publicly asked what he would do to fix Apple, and he responded, 'I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.'"

 

But things quickly changed after Cook came on board as a vice president. Less than a year after his Apple debut, the corporation was reporting profits, an extraordinary shift from a recent report that showed a net loss of $1 billion from the prior fiscal year. As Cook rose to executive vice president and then a chief operating officer, he took responsibility for managing worldwide sales and operations, along with leading the Macintosh division and continued development of reseller/supplier relationships.

 

In August 2011, Cook was named Apple's new CEO, taking over the position for former CEO and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in October 2011 after a years-long battle with cancer. In addition to serving as CEO, Cook sits on the corporation's board of directors.

 

In May 2014, Apple announced its biggest acquisition to date when it bought Beats Music and Beats Electronics for $3 billion. As part of the deal, Beats co-founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine would join Apple in executive roles. In a letter to Apple employees, Cook said, “This afternoon we announced that Apple is acquiring Beats Music and Beats Electronics, two fast-growing businesses which complement our product line and will help extend the Apple ecosystem in the future. Bringing our companies together paves the way for amazing developments that our customers will love.”

 

Following this, at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2014, Cook announced the latest version of the Apple operating system for desktop and mobile, OSX Yosemite. In September of the same year, Cook unveiled the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, both of which had larger screen sizes and came with new features such as Apple Pay and “Burst Selfies.” He also announced the first new product under his reign, a wearable device to track fitness and health, the “Apple Watch,” available for purchase in 2015.

 

Cook continued to oversee the development of new products like Clips, an app that enabled the creation of short videos for social media. A few months after its spring 2017 debut, Apple unveiled the iPhone X, which generated buzz in the tech world for its facial recognition system.

 

"He took a lot of unfair criticism early on. . . . The outside world wanted to compare him to Steve." But Cook "wasn't going to try to be Steve," Joswiak said. "And what a smart thing, because no one could be Steve.. . . Instead Tim, was Tim. Tim brought the things that he could to the business."

Like most successful leaders, Cook played to his unique strengths to run the company effectively. In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, he explained that Jobs never expected him to lead Apple in the same way that he had.

 

"He knew, when he chose me, that I wasn't like him, that I'm not a carbon copy of him," Cook told Rose. "And so he obviously thought through that deeply, about who he wanted to lead Apple. I have always felt the responsibility of that."

 

Cook says he desperately wanted to continue Jobs's legacy and "pour every ounce that I had in myself into the company," but he never had the objective of being the same as Jobs. "I knew, the only person I can be is the person I am," he continued. "I've tried to be the best Tim Cook I can be." And that's exactly what he's done.

 

• Tim Cook as an inspiration

Joining Apple during the time of crisis was never easy for Tim. Now, due to his hard work and dedication, the company is having a golden run at the big stage. Therefore, Tim is an inspiration for many aspiring entrepreneurs!

 

"Let your joy be in your journey - not in some distant goal." - Tim Cook