Apple's Definition of Success
In a world obsessed with growth metrics and viral numbers, Tim Cook's reflection on Apple's philosophy feels almost radical. The idea that a tech company would deliberately choose quality over quantity ... that "making the best" could be more valuable than "making the most" ... runs counter to everything we've been taught about success in the digital age.
But maybe that's exactly why it's worth examining.
There's this thing in technology, almost a disease, where the definition of success is making the most. How many clicks did you get, how many active users do you have, how many units did you sell? Everybody in technology seems to want big numbers. Steve never got carried away with that. He focused on making the best.
Cook's description of metrics obsession as "almost a disease" is particularly striking. We've all seen companies chase vanity metrics at the expense of genuine value creation ... optimising for engagement over user wellbeing, scale over sustainability, growth over craftsmanship.
That took a change in my own thinking when I came to the company [Cook left Compaq to join Apple in 1998]. I had been in the Windows world before that, and that world was all about making the most. It still is.
This admission reveals something important: the "make the most" mentality isn't just a tech problem, it's a cultural default that even experienced leaders have to consciously unlearn. Cook had to rewire his own definition of success when he joined Apple.
When Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions: What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a significant contribution to society with this? If we can't, and if we can't own the key technologies, we don't do it.
The Discipline of Saying No
What strikes me most about this philosophy is how much discipline it requires. It's easy to chase every opportunity, to optimise for growth at all costs, to measure success purely in numerical terms. It's much harder to ask: "Should we even be doing this? Can we do it exceptionally well? Will it genuinely matter?"
This connects to something I've observed in my own work: the best projects often come from saying no to good opportunities in order to say yes to great ones. But "great" is harder to measure than "big." You can't easily graph "making a significant contribution to society" the way you can track monthly active users.
The irony, of course, is that Apple's commitment to "making the best" has ultimately led to making quite a lot. They're one of the world's most valuable companies. But the financial success seems to be a byproduct of the philosophy, not the goal itself.
Beyond the Valley's Growth Obsession
This perspective feels especially relevant as we watch tech companies struggle with the long-term consequences of growth-at-all-costs thinking. From social media platforms grappling with misinformation to startups burning through venture capital without sustainable business models, the "make the most" mentality has created systemic problems that are harder to solve than they were to create.
Apple's approach suggests an alternative: What if we started with the question of whether something is worth making excellently, rather than whether it can scale quickly? What if we measured success by the depth of impact rather than just the breadth of reach?
This doesn't mean abandoning ambition or avoiding scale, it means ensuring that scale serves a deeper purpose. It means building things that you'd be proud to have your name on, even if they never became the biggest thing in their category.
The challenge, of course, is that this philosophy requires long-term thinking in an environment that often rewards short-term results. It requires confidence in your vision when metrics might suggest a different path. It requires the discipline to turn down opportunities that could be profitable but wouldn't be meaningful.
But maybe that's exactly what makes it worth pursuing.