Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired - and Secretive - Company Really Works

Inside Apple reveals the secret systems, tactics, and leadership strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to churn out hit after hit and inspire a cult-like following for Apple products.

If Apple is Silicon Valley's answer to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, then author Adam Lashinsky provides listeners with a golden ticket to step inside. In this primer on leadership and innovation, the author introduces concepts like the "DRI" (Apple's practice of assigning a Directly Responsible Individual to every task) and the Top 100 (an annual ritual in which 100 up-and-coming executives were tapped, à la Skull Bones, for a secret retreat with company founder Steve Jobs).

Based on numerous interviews, the book offers exclusive new information about how Apple innovates, deals with its suppliers, and is handling the transition into the Post Jobs Era. Lashinsky, a senior editor-at-large for Fortune, knows the subject cold: In a 2008 cover story for the magazine, entitled "The Genius Behind Steve: Could Operations Whiz Tim Cook Run The Company Someday?" he predicted that Tim Cook, then an unknown, would eventually succeed Steve Jobs as CEO.

While Inside Apple is ostensibly a deep dive into one, unique company (and its ecosystem of suppliers, investors, employees and competitors), the lessons about Jobs, leadership, product design and marketing are universal. They should appeal to anyone hoping to bring some of that Apple magic to their own company, career, or creative endeavor.

©2012 Adam Lashinsky (P)2012 Hachette Audio