Tim Cook spoke at the 2018 Fortune CEO initiative in San Francisco. He discussed the company’s core beliefs and ideals.
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Watch Apple CEO Tim Cook Speak At Fortune's CEO Initiative
Transcript
Well for Apple we've always been about changing the world. And it became clear to me some number of years ago that you don't do that by staying quiet on things that matter. And so for us that's really been the driving the driving issue. And there's no there's no formula about when you speak and when you don't. But but for the way that I think about it is is it something that Apple has a special expertise on. I don't want Apple to be another talking head. Right. We should only speak when we have certain knowledge to to bring to the subject for. And I always ask myself Do we have standing you know do we have a right to talk about this issue and in generally speaking more than just it's not enough to be a large company to speak. At least I don't see it like that at all. And so I think about those. And so what that means for us is we typically speak about education about privacy about human rights about immigration and about the environment because there's something that we have where we can bring a point of view. It may be discounted. Most people may view it to be not correct. Right. But it but nevertheless it's a point of view that we can share and we think we have something to offer in those spaces. Let me challenge you on those specifically. So let's say let's put a pin in education. Apple always has had a large advocation market. Let's put a pin in the environment for free.
I think for some obvious reasons you're very proud of that. And and what it but immigration and human rights why are the why why does Apple have standing on those. There's nothing commercial in that well I think well first of all I don't think business should only deal in commercial things. I think that's a fallacy. I think business business to me is a know nothing more than a collection people. And if people should have values which are I argue that should then by extension a company should have values because it's just a collection of people. But on immigration in particular we have a lot of immigrants that work at Apple. We have first generation and obviously at some point we're all immigrants but if you look at the number of people that we have on Dokka we've got over 300 folks that are here on Dokka and and so arguably I want to stand up for them. We have several thousand people that are a part of our team that are on H1 BS that may be in the deep green card backlog. And so this bids us both a perspective to share about the importance of having people with different points of view when you're running a global company with global customers. But also it gives you a bit of a perspective on what the live the life is like. And you know I to me too often in the case of immigration people quickly get to numbers you know. But there are real people behind this that have you know real feelings and in the very core a core part of the United States. And so.
So I think we do have a significant significant standing there and the the diversity of our company where it is never enough and you can never you never really achieve the end here. If you do you're you're kidding yourself. But we have a lot of different people from a lot of different places and we are accepting people from everywhere. And so we think we have something to offer about talking about that kind of environment and ultimately that is what human rights is all about. It's about just treating people with dignity and respect. At the end of the day. And so these are topics that we think we can add something to. And and so we're not we don't we.
