On June 22, Bloomberg’s well-known Apple reporter Mark Gurman published an article on Sunday, reviewing the changes in Apple’s organizational structure over the past decade. During the Cook era, the design team's influence at Apple's top management gradually weakened, a trend exacerbated by Jony Ive's departure and talent exodus, while finance and operations departments had an increasing say in product direction.
Turnus
However, Gurman believes that John Ternus, who is about to take over as CEO, may recalibrate this relationship and reaffirm the design team's important position in Apple's future development.
After Ive left the company, oversight of Apple's design team fell to former chief operating officer Jeff Williams. This is a major adjustment compared with the previous management model. In the past, the industrial design team led by Ive dominated Apple's product roadmap from top to bottom.
The importance of the design team was highlighted as early as 2011 in "The Biography of Steve Jobs" written by Walter Isaacson. The book quotes Jobs as saying that Ive's operating power at Apple is second only to Jobs himself because "this is the operating model I established."
But now, the situation is completely opposite to that of back then. Many believe that Apple has reduced the importance of its design department to less important than its operations department. Apple doesn't even have a senior design executive position right now, and only recently added the profiles of Molly Anderson and Steve Lemay to its leadership team page.
However, Ternus knew that the design team was in need of a major overhaul and was preparing to put his own distinct stamp on the team. That's one reason he personally took over the design team last year, a move that ultimately heralded his ascension to the top job. He has spent a lot of time with the industrial design team, in contrast to Cook's historically limited involvement. Now, he needs to take that commitment to new heights.
In a recent internal meeting with employees, Ternus said the company "will continue to focus on design because design is at the core of everything Apple does." "Apple has brought truly great design to more people than any company in history," he said, adding that the most beautifully designed things most users own are Apple products, and "we'll make sure that remains true."