Operational depts have a natural tendency to answer "that's not possible" when challenged very hard, and to try and negotiate compromises. You don't need the to

Operational depts have a natural tendency to answer "that's not possible" when challenged very hard, and to try and negotiate compromises. You don't need the top guy to be the tastemaster, but you need his arbitrages to be heavily biased in favor of designers, not operatives. For this reason, it sounds worrisome to put the chief operative officer at the top position, generally speaking. Now I don't know Tim Cook, maybe he's able/trained to let the visionaries call the shots.