The creation of culture is about putting what’s inside on the outside. Some of the most inspirational figures in modern technology started off as dreamers, interested in exploring brave new technosocial paradigms by standing on the shoulders of cutting-edge ideas. But what happens when, a few decades into the game, it’s time to consider a succession plan?

In the pieces I’ve been writing here on <stabletalk>, I’ve been focusing on how the realization of new ideas often requires new toolkits. In many of my posts, I’ve referenced projects that run on hardware and software designed by Apple Inc., and it seemed like it was time to look at the company itself in the context of tools for innovation. I also figured that you were familiar enough with the aesthetics of Apple products, dear reader, to warrant the inclusion of some pun-tastic imagery.

How does a company like Apple, built upon pillars of design-driven innovation and countercultural business practice, approach the challenge of codifying and institutionalizing its values? While business analysts and cultural theoreticians concerned with the health of CEO Steve Jobs have been buzzing on the topic in the press, the codification of values and innovative process is already underway – inside and outside of Apple’s Cupertino campus.

Two years after my birthday, and last year: business innovation-as-usual.

I was born in 1982, in the midst of the Apple II era and the year when Steve Jobs was forced off the Lisa team and on to the Macintosh project. With a healthy interest in computers and technology, it made sense to me even in childhood that the social structures and institutions I would be drawn toward would explicitly concern themselves with the technologically defined aspects of our existence. While a generation above me argued about “Apple as a Religion” from the perspective of products and experiences they first encountered as adults, I think you really get to the heart of that discussion when talking to people who have experienced those products and experiences from childhood. Religion is a powerful force amongst converted adults… but it’s even more powerful when you get it from day one, right? A bit of research has even surfaced through the BBC noting similarities in neurological activity between people engaged in religious rituals and those engaged in the use / discussion / unboxing of Apple products.

While the Cult of Apple gets plenty of press, it’s also one of the ways in which Apple has indirectly (and that’s debatable) codified its values. This week marks the ten year anniversary of the company’s move into retail. It’s interesting to think about how the replacement of the Apple Store’s paper information sheets with iPads is meant to associate the company with innovative values in the minds of the young, who can be found in no small number huddled around MacBooks Air and Pro once the school bell rings. By providing a broader cultural context for its products, Apple has extended its realm of influence and relevance accordingly. If you’re into computers, Mac-vs-PC has been a “religious” debate that stands for much more than AltiVec engines, clickwheels, and advertisments featuring Justin Long. In this context, the seemingly spartan Apple Store becomes a church not only for retail consumerism (Bad!), but also for the valuation of design and innovation (Good!).

Organizationally, Apple has long been known as the corporate equivalent of a maximum security prison. For all of the cultural context the company enjoys, very little knowledge has escaped in terms of how things are actually run. I’ve known a few employees of Apple who were vocal about bad experiences resulting from the company’s misalignment with values assumed to be present from the outside, but it’s hard to get a conversation with anyone really enjoying it – they’re likely to be characterized by their total silence and ear-to-ear grins. It’s only been in the last few weeks that a snapshot of contemporary management structure and process at Apple has been revealed, in a fascinating article in Fortune by Adam Lashinsky (that you have to buy for $0.99 on the Kindle store, or for $4.99 as part of the issue on iPad)

Fortune's Apple Org. Chart images are behind a paywall... try one of these on for size.

Depending on how indulgent you are with your fanboy status, “Inside Apple” is either bleak or drool-inducing. It seems that the legends of Steve Jobs flipping out are very much accurate, and that his singular and legendary attention to detail is alive and well in spite of recent medical leave(s). On the other hand, Jobs’ affordance of evil genius-grade resources and opportunities to select crack teams also appears to be business-as-usual. One of the real gems of the article is an organizational chart unlike any you’ve seen for companies of Apple’s size. Instead of tiers of sprawl in upper management, there are really only a few layers: Steve Jobs, his cadre of VP’s, and pretty much everyone else.

A spiritual leader like Jobs, whose vision statements were inspired by tabs of acid and who steered the invention of at least five of the most notable technological products of the last forty years, is going to be awfully hard for a company like Apple to write into its operations manual. The article in Fortune explores how the company has been making attempts to build corporate courseware (which I don’t expect to see on iTunes University any time soon, although it would be the design and business curriculum of the century) that institutionalizes Jobs’ rhetorical explications of the meaning of life into something teams can learn from, outside of the reality distortion field.

One strategy for creating a more inside-out culture at Apple.

Apple’s operations revolve around a benevolent dictator of design, and are surrounded by a devoted fanbase of hundreds of millions. If cultural innovation is about putting what’s inside on the outside, Apple has plenty of work and opportunities ahead. For all of the tools the company has shipped, and for all of the tools required to develop them, Apple has never really opened up with regards to its process. As the so-called Second Coming of Steve Jobs (who has an official biography coming out next year) begins to wind down, it will be fascinating to look at how the company reconsiders and then formalizes its inner values, processes, and toolkits.