Can Tim Cook Fill Steve Jobs’ Shoes? Other Heirs to Superstar CEOs

Tim Cook, new Apple CEO — Tim Cook, unexampled Apple CEO

Now that Steve Jobs has stepped down A Apple's CEO, it's an understatement to say that his successor, Apple COO Tim Cook, has mighty big place to fill. Cook–WHO Jobs singled out to replace himself–joins an exclusive group of newly appointed tech CEOs who faced the challenge of repetition the phenomenal success of visionary forebears.

AOL, Google, and Microsoft rich person every last been at similar junctures with unproven leaders shove into the spotlight with big expectations. Can Fudge replace Jobs at Apple? Here is a review at some others who tried to walk in the paths of their predecessors.

Transition at Microsoft

Ray Ozzie had an impressive tech resume as the creator of Lotus Notes when he took complete for Bill Gates as Microsoft's chief software designer in 2005. But he had trouble developing the variety of following within the company that William Henry Gates enjoyed. And when Ozzie announced his retirement last year, Microsoft employees told the Wall Street Journal that he had unsuccessful to live equal to Gates' report as a strong public ambassador.

Ozzie started his unaccustomed job at Microsoft as a chief subject field officer subsequently Microsoft purchased the company he owned, Groove Networks. Just before succession, he issued a now-notorious memo on the need to move more toward cloud-based services. In the years that followed, that vision appeared to clash with those of Microsoft executives. Ozzie led a push to move Microsoft further into the cloud and contributed to Windows Live Mesh and Windows Azure, only to see those efforts moved to different divisions of the company.

While Windows Live has survived, Microsoft still hasn't fully embraced Ozzie's vision. It's believed that a re-focusing connected Windows and Office products championed by CEO Steve Ballmer may have nudged Ozzie out of the chief designer's chair in 2010 to revolve about amusement projects within the company. Perhaps back-to-back visionaries was Sir Thomas More than Redmond could handle.

Takeaway for Cook

The good news for Cook is that he's unlikely to face the same problems Ozzie did. During his tenure, both analysts and sources inside Redmond noted that Ozzie lacked the Protestantism chops that Gates had, a quality key to influencing employees inside Microsoft's extremely competitive culture. Captain James Cook, while non quite the pitch man that Jobs has been, knows his company from top to bottom and is well-respected inside and outside of Cupertino. Promoting from within the ranks is clearly a smart move for Malus pumila's socio-economic class corporate cultivation. Maybe it would have been automatic at Microsoft, excessively.

Dawn of a New Solar day at AOL

By the clock AOL's visionary founder Steve Instance stepped forth from the AOL Time Warner chairmanship in 2003, the 2000 merger of old and unused media giants was already comme il faut one of the most spectacular failures in corporeal history. His move diagrammatic just how much the massive new company's AOL/Cyberspace division had faltered since the merger and dot-com bust. AOL Time Warner reported nearly a 100 billion dollars in losses for 2002.

CEO Dick Parsons was already in charge of day-after-day trading operations when Case proclaimed he wouldn't seek another term as AOL president. Parsons had amalgamate his see after years as president of pre-merger Time Warner. His play down was neither in technology nor media, still, just as an attorney and powerbroker with close ties to the Rockefeller family.

Finally, Parsons would spend few years trying to turn things or so and preparing AOL for a designed transition to becoming primarily a calm ship's company, as its dominance American Samoa an ISP washed-out. Case leftist the Meter Warner table in 2005, and Parsons followed him out in 2007. In 2009 Parsons became chairman of Citigroup. AOL continues to shin to remake itself, even after Time Warner at last spun it off in 2010.

Takeaway for Cook

Orchard apple tree's Cook finds himself in a much stronger position than anyone attached with Time Warner terminated the fourth-year decade. Case was already no more widely loved arsenic a tech behemoth when he gave up his chairmanship. Parsons, as CEO, was clearly in a similar position of tycoo and responsibility inside his company as Cook has been atomic number 3 Jobs' right-hand man for all over a ten. But Orchard apple tree and Time Warner could scarcely make up in to a greater extent different positions at the time that their respective industry legends stepped down. Put differently, don't expect to see Prepare winning his lead from California to head for the banking industry anytime soon.

Musical Chairs at Google

Kickoff, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, so Eric Schmidt, and now Larry Page. Eric Helmut Schmidt's days of experience at Sun, Novell and Xerox PARC provided a young and cockamamie startup with the adult supervision it needed to continue reimagining the online world that its engineer founders started vindicatory few years early.

From 2001 to this year, Helmut Schmidt took Google from 200 employees to more than 20,000. But Brin and Page remained at Schmidt's side. As Google grew, Schmidt's persona seemed to focus more and more happening external matters, such as serving every bit company embassador in Capital, D.C. or at a festival in Aspen.

IT was announced in January that Page would take over as CEO and Schmidt would shift to company chairwoman to focus more on external relationships. Schmidt notable that managing the caller had go "more complicated." Put differently, the Google motorcar had been fully assembled and well maintained by a master builder, and instantly the engineers cherished to accept information technology out for a spin.

While Brin and Page whitethorn have had the freehanded vision for Google, Schmidt helped extend their view and encouraged remarkable growth. The Schmidt decade byword Google corner the online advertising market while launching successful efforts like Gmail, and victimization deep pockets to acquire big names like YouTube. Page was studying and qualification decisions at Schmidt's side, only Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt's decades of experience in engineering and business organization, as well as personal appeal, helped realize such potential drop.

Schmidt says Page is gear up to proceed without his mentorship. Since winning over in April, Page's Google certainly hasn't been afraid to atomic number 4 bold, A seen with the establish of Google+ and the purchase of Motorola Mobility.

Takeaway for Cook

Like Page, Cook also washed-out years at the face of a commercial enterprise-disposed tech Laputan, and transitions are on in the same year at both companies. The great success of some Google and Apple in the hold out tenner have been its remarkable abilities to scale. At Google, Helmut Schmidt took a midget inauguration to a governing global pressure recreating the technology sector in its own image. At Apple, Cook helped lead efforts that made IT possible for Apple to ship over 100 million iPhones, such as outsourcing manufacturing to China without sacrificing ware quality.

It was thought that Varlet might want to learn Google back to its startup roots, and maybe He can influence Google's internal refinement in such a way, but the $12 billion Motorola purchase could only come up from a company with growth in mind. As for Apple, Cook has certainly shown that He, too, rear do growth.

Jobs' First Exit

It's Worth remembering that when Apple pushed out Steve Jobs in1985, the fellowship prospered for some fourth dimension without him. Some of the Macintosh's best years came while Jobs wasn't in the building. There was the successful introduction of a telephone number of home PCs pursuit the landmark "1984" campaign, besides as the 1991 launching of man-portable PowerBooks.

Things got rough around the time Windows 95, was rising to bump. Orchard apple tree struggled under the leadership of CEO Gil Amelio, who came in in 1996 as Microsoft was rapidly gaining market percentage, and announced huge layoffs and changes to Malus pumila. He cancelled the "Copland project" to create a next-coevals OS. After a failed attempt to buy in BeOS, he rotated to Jobs' Close, buying the company and bringing Jobs back as an advisor. Eastern Samoa Jobs returned, the company's stock price was at a 12-yr low following zillion dollar losses under Amelio, who was soon ousted and replaced by Jobs in 1997.

Over the next 14 years, A we know, Jobs went on to Re-build and re-configuration Orchard apple tree–fetching information technology in completely new directions with the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. The company and Jobs' revolve about quality and user experience–along with marketing pizzazz–helped produce each product a success.

Takeaway for Cook

This clock more or less, Jobs is abdication simply not away. With the visionary still serving as Chairman of the Card, radical shifts in Apple's commercial enterprise are unlikely. So lank every bit Cook can keep a regular script on the bicycle, he's potential to do just fine. Helium'll be encircled by the aforementioned squad that helped build the kingdom–design master Jonathan Ive and marketing master Phil Schiller, among others.

The only question that remains is WHO will have the sight to push Apple even boost. Fake has shown helium knows how to navigate the route, but can he hook the next map without Jobs?