This Businessweek interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook is an excellent read, but I really nodded when Cook talked about Apple's unparalleled level of integration and the role that collaboration plays in their culture and organizational structure, inasmuch as it points a bow around the core thesis behind my recent GigaOM article on the age of indivisibility and integrated systems design. Here's Cook:
"You look at what we are great at. There are many things. But the one thing we do, which I think no one else does, is integrate hardware, software and services in such a way that most consumers begin to not differentiate anymore. They just care that the experience is fantastic. So how do we keep doing that and keep taking it to an even higher level? You have to be an A-plus at collaboration."
Sounds sooo simple, yet just a tiny handful of companies on the planet have found a way to do this across products segments, product lifecycles, and do so at scale -- over a multi-year period. That's the magic of Apple.
Read the full Cook interview HERE.
Read my GigaOM piece HERE.
