How Apple Is Organized for Innovation

Skunk Works, cowrit-ten by Leo Janos).

Yet, even before formal reviews—say in a meeting between relatively experienced contributors like Bas and me—each of us could decide about our own portions of the work and whether we were willing to exert the effort and hours needed to pursue a new idea or make an additional refinement.

Such hierarchically restricted access to the CEO can’t be too different from what happens with other large companies, but the way to get admission to these high-level meetings at Apple had much less to do with your place on the org chart and much more to do with your ability to make the products better.