Apple University VP takes an in-depth look at how Apple is ‘organized for innovation’

Apple University Vice President and Dean Joel Podolny has penned an article that takes a deep dive into how Apple is structured and how it’s unique among large businesses. The in-depth review of Apple’s structure, published Thursday in Harvard Business Review , was co-written by Apple University faculty member Morten Hansen. And it offers an interesting look at how the Cupertino tech giant is “organized for innovation.” Podolny opens by noting how much Apple has grown.

In 1997, when Steve Jobs returned to the company, Apple had 8,000 employees and about $7 billion in annual revenue. Fast forward to 2019, and the company has 137,000 staffers and brings in about $260 billion in revenue. But amid all of that growth, Apple has largely kept the same centralized organizational structure that Jobs implemented in 1997. “Believing that conventional management had stifled innovation, Jobs, in his first year returning as CEO, laid off the general managers of all the business units (in a single day), put the entire company under one P&L, and combined the disparate functional departments of the business units into one functional organization,” Podolny wrote. The Apple University VP notes that most large companies have decentralized or multi-division […]

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