Apple received an unwanted spotlight last week when President Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, attacked CEO Tim Cook for not moving manufacturing out of China fast enough. In fact, having received similar pressure during Trump’s first term, Apple, in terms of what it sells in the U.S., now makes most iPhones in India and most laptops, AirPods, and other devices in Vietnam. Furthermore, Cook has committed over $500 billion to new U.S. manufacturing facilities and design centers that will employ about 20,000 Americans.
Nevertheless, by late last week attention had quickly shifted to Cook’s tenure as CEO.
Part of this may be seasonal. There is often debate during the hot midsummer months—after annual shareholder meetings—over whether CEO is turnover increasing or decreasing. CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla has said that one factor behind this is an effort to create headlines during the “tape slump” of major business news. He suggested this behavior was behind a recent report by respected analysts Walter Piecyk and Joe Galone at Lightshed calling for Apple to consider replacing Cook amidst Apple’s struggles with artificial intelligence.
We believe that such short-sighted attacks on an icon of American industry could not be more misguided. Cook’s leadership is still critically needed at Apple.
Apple and AI
While Apple hasn’t been a first mover in AI, it doesn’t need to be. In fact, it might benefit the company to not get sucked into the AI arms race amidst counterproductive and desperate moves from competitors—consider Meta offering cash bonuses of up to $100 million to poach AI engineers from rivals.
At our Yale CEO Summit last month, nearly 50% of CEOs polled believe that AI hype has already led to significant overinvestment within their companies. An equal proportion think that AI investments have been allocated inefficiently and profess disappointment with the return on investment.
While nobody doubts the importance of AI to Apple’s future, a critical management skill is finding the right balance on the make vs. buy tradeoff. Developing products in-house is not the only way to go. Despite Apple’s setbacks with Apple Intelligence, a potential partnership or outright acquisition of Perplexity could transform Apple into an AI leader practically overnight, as noted by many savvy analysts, including Wedbush’s Dan Ives.
There are many examples of companies successfully buying or partnering their way into new products or business lines: IBM’s visionary acquisition of RedHat in 2019 gave it a foothold in cloud computing—now a core business. Pfizer’s partnership with BioNTech during the pandemic allowed for the rapid production of the COVID vaccine. Merck’s acquisition of Schering-Plough brought in the blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda, which now powers about half of its sales.
Transforming Apple
Despite Apple’s AI stumbles, Cook deserves a long leash as one of the most revered chief executives of our time, with an unparalleled track record of accomplishment. A genuine tech visionary, he faced the daunting and unenviable task of succeeding the larger-than-life Steve Jobs. He assumed the reins with a rare blend of energy and humility, inspiring others to innovate without any personal grandiosity, transforming Apple into the world’s most valuable company.
Under Cook’s stewardship, Apple’s market value has soared from $350 billion in 2011 to more than $3 trillion today. Apple became the first U.S. company to achieve a $1 trillion market capitalization in 2018, doubling that figure in 2020 and tripling it just three years later.
Despite the echo-chamber accusations that Cook is nothing more than a supply chain guru and not a true product visionary, the truth is that Cook’s tenure has seen Apple revolutionize its product lineup, driving profound advancements for the iPhone, Mac, and iPad and introducing industry-leading devices such as the Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Vision Pro. His leadership has also expanded the Apple ecosystem, launching services like Apple Pay, which is growing every year, as well as Apple Music and Apple TV+.
Despite this unparalleled record of achievement, even supporters of Cook wonder if he may have lost his touch or his creativity. Though strongly supporting Cook, CNBC anchor David Faber wondered aloud, “sometimes, as people get older, they may not be taking in as much information, or their expertise may be in an area that is no longer as specific to needs of their business, and I’m curious as to whether there is somebody else out there who might be in a better position to do that.”
Long leadership
The first author of this essay has closely studied age and work—once called industrial gerontology—since the founding of the field decades ago, and my book The Hero’s Farewell: What Happens when CEOs Retire provided the first empirical studies of leaders in late career. There is no correspondence between age and invention, or age and leadership.
Over 45 years of research on age and work, I have closely documented the effects of age and found potentially surprising results. Older workers tend to have greater sales skills and interpersonal savvy, with only modest declines in physical dexterity. Research on age and risk in engineering found that older managers were only mildly less willing to take risks. They took longer to make decisions, but they were better able to appreciate the value of new information.
Consider some of the startling examples through history. Benjamin Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence at 70, invented bifocal glasses in his late 70s, and negotiated an agreement to salvage the Constitutional Convention at 81. France relied upon Charles De Gaulle to unify the nation while he was in his late sixties and seventies. Averell Harriman, after leading Union Pacific and Brown Brothers Harriman, served as one of America’s greatest diplomats, unofficially advising presidents until his nineties.
Compared to these examples, at age 64, Cook is just getting started.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some steps Cook can take to strengthen Apple’s positioning, even beyond doubling down on AI development. As CNBC’s Jim Cramer pointed out, it would not hurt with the Trump administration if Apple accelerated some of its $500 billion commitment for domestic manufacturing. Moving some spending forward and accelerating that planned four-year timeline would be a tangible political and patriotic signal to rectify Trump’s fears that he is being played via delays and long timeframes. Similarly, it may not hurt Apple to add a respected technologist with AI, software, or hardware expertise to its board.
But clearly, Apple has stayed ripe for growth and product innovation under Cook, and the attacks on him and the company are half-baked.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
Read more:
- Apple CEO Tim Cook has created more shareholder value than Steve Jobs. But suddenly his weaknesses are on display in the AI era
- Don’t count out Apple in the ‘AI race’: It might be in the best position of all
- Apple’s AI efforts ‘have struck midnight,’ and the only way it can stop getting further behind is acquiring Perplexity, analyst Dan Ives says
- Apple is facing a ‘fork in the road year’ on AI, but has one clear advantage, analysts say
