[padmapper]

Apple has thousands of employees. But it's not design by committee. There's a strong drummer in that company that keeps everyone marching in step, so that the entire company adopts and shares that one person's vision, or at least the general philosophy behind it. That's not to say that the drummer has a vision that goes unaltered by interactions with other smart people, but when their vision changes, it propagates.

[unalone]

That's one way it can go. But can also work where the final vision is a collaborative effort on the part of all the people working on it.

Apple's strategy is actually originally inspired by the Beatles, where five people all contributed and the resulting songs sounded nothing like any one of those people in particular. I'm certain if Steve Jobs designed everything on his own, Apple would be different than it is with a dozen people all working on one thing. And Jonathan Ive says this directly in interviews. He refuses credit for his work, because in his mind it's the entire team working together that's responsible for his final work.

[padmapper]

Curious about the bit about strategy inspiration - do you remember where you learned that?

Sure, Jobs isn't designing every little piece - it's more that he serves as the dictator. Because he's very unforgiving in design reviews, I think his subordinates start to think like him.

Dictator usually have advisors, but in history, the dictators who are swayed by lots of advisors with strongly competing interests tend not to do too well.

[unalone]

http://cnettv.cnet.com/60-minutes-steve-jobs/9742-1_53-50004...

[padmapper]

Thanks for retrieving that. What he says and does may be slightly different (especially in a TV interview), but pretty good video.