Designed to impart Jobs' 'Virtual DNA' on execs

Almost exactly three years ago, Apple made a high-profile hire for a low-profile position: it recruited the dean of Yale's Business School, a professor named Joel Podolny, to run Apple University -- a project aimed at imprinting then-CEO Steve Jobs' philosophies and vision onto Apple employees. Jobs himself meticulously planned the concept of Apple University based on a similar success story at Pixar, and saw it as a way to continue his legacy, the LA Times reports.

Jobs wanted Podolny, who had worked extensively at Yale with a particular focus on organizational-behavior research and who had done studies of how leaders infuse meaning into their organizations, to help Apple internalize Jobs' outlook and Apple's corporate culture to prepare for the day when he would no longer be there. Jobs was said to be well aware of the uniqueness of Apple's company structure and wanted to preserve and codify it, in turn creating new executives would could address challenges with knowledge of how Jobs or other top Apple executives might have handled a similar situation.

Podolny has been working with other business professors to research the company's major decisions and who made them, using the case studies to teach courses to groom the company's next generation of leaders. Tim Cook, now CEO himself, has taught some of the courses, a source said.

The idea of a corporate university is not new -- in addition the successful training course set up by Jobs when he was head of Pixar, other companies have tried to indoctrinate workers in the core values of the company, including General Electric, The Walt Disney Company, and Hewlett-Packard, the founders of which befriended and worked with Jobs in his formative years and set out their own set of principles in a book called "The HP Way." Jobs often cited Bill Hewlett as an inspiration, and Hewlett gave Jobs one of his first employment experiences.

Though most companies have given up on the idea of impressing key values into employees beyond a printed training manual or company mission statement, former employees said Jobs pursued the idea for years, using Pixar University -- which teaches fine arts and filmmaking basics as well as leadership and management skills -- as a model. Pixar's university immerses workers in the history of the company, the craft of making the kind of films it wants to make, and indoctrinates employees into the company's culture and values.

Though Apple began work on what would become Apple University in earnest as early as 2006, the Times reports that the project took on greater urgency in 2008, shortly before Jobs took his second medical leave from Apple in what was eventually revealed to be a serious complication of his cancer, requiring a liver transplant. Jobs recruited Podolny to set up the school, after Podolny himself had re-thought the model of how Yale teaches MBAs and introduced more holistic, multi-disciplinary programs that encouraged students to gain wider and more diverse non-business experience and to think on a larger scale than just the company.

Podolyny is widely credited with revamping the management program, increasing applications and fundraising as well as being known for being a very hands-on leader who personally communicated with staff and students directly by e-mail. He officially joined Apple in 2009, convinced he would be working with -- and studying -- a modern-day cross between Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. His own personal love of Apple's products and direction played a strong role in influencing him to leave Yale, where he had been expected to become president of the university at some stage.

Today, Podolny is Vice President of Human Resources and Dean of Apple University, according to his LinkedIn profile. In a sign of both his importance to the future of the company as well as Jobs' faith in him, his office was in-between those of Jobs and Cook. [via Los Angeles Times]

Note Podolny at the table with other Apple executives; he's the man in the gray shirt in the upper-right position.



Apple's executive structure under Steve Jobs.

by MacNN Staff