Why Tim Cook Will Never Be Steve Jobs

By Professor Xu Huang

Steve Jobs and John Sculley. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Jack Ma and Daniel Zhang. Business history keeps returning to the same pattern: when founders step aside, something changes. Innovation slows, instincts fade, the magic dulls, and the so-called founder advantage disappears. Why do founder CEOs so often drive outsized creativity and risk-taking compared with their professional counterparts? Shouldn’t innovation come easier to those who inherit resources, teams, and momentum?

A recent paper[1] offers an interesting answer, suggesting that founder CEOs aren’t driven purely by profits or performance metrics, but by something harder to quantify—a sense of calling. They see their work as a mission, not a mandate. Thus, founder CEOs are typically propelled by a strong vision, rooted in a personal desire to alter the status quo in ways that leave a lasting mark. And that conviction, more than any business strategy, may be what keeps their companies inventing instead of merely operating.

Building on what management scholars call upper echelons theory—the idea that companies reflect the values and mindsets of their leaders—the researchers studied 200 high-tech firms in China. Their conclusion? Companies led by founder CEOs simply innovate more. Able to balance bold experimentation with operational control due to their unique status, these leaders tend to be driven by something even harder to measure: a personal sense of calling that keeps the company pushing forward.

Going beyond outcomes, the researchers found that founder CEOs are better at what management theorists call ambidexterity, or the ability to run a company that can explore new ideas while still exploiting what already works. That balance between curiosity and control is rare, and it’s amplified when founders see their work as a calling. Their sense of purpose helps them sustain the tension between vision and execution that fuels innovation.

The founder effect doesn’t apply to everyone with a title. It’s only founder CEOs who view their mission as a calling who are likely to keep their firms agile and balance exploration with execution. Driven by purpose, they tend to act as stewards, while professional managers behave more like agents focused on efficiency and control.

The findings offer some practical takeaways. Boards should strive to keep founders involved, even in non-executive roles, in order to preserve the sense of vision that’s crucial to sustain innovation. Meanwhile investors should weight a founder’s sense of calling as an asset in itself—one that helps leaders stay focused on innovation under pressure and balance risk with discipline over time. Finally, educators should point to the value of teaching purpose alongside strategy, helping future founders define why they do what they do.

The research confirms what many in business already sense from watching the careers of iconic founders: a founder’s calling may be a company’s most enduring advantage, and the hardest to replicate. In the end, no one will ever mistake Tim Cook for Steve Jobs!

Reference:

[1]  Pan, J., Hmieleski, K. M., Ma, B., Lysova, E. I., Tang, Z., & Huang, X. (2025). The power of calling: How founder CEOs drive ambidexterity and innovation in firms. Journal of Management Studies, 62(7), 2898–2937. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13144