During a 1998 profile in Fortune, Steve Jobs stressed how true innovation requires hiring the right people.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led and how much you get it.
Of course, attracting, hiring and keeping the right people in the ultra-competitive world of Silicon Valley is no easy task. To that end, having a bank account that lingers in the US$137 billion range certainly helps.
That said, it may not be all that surprising that four of the top five highest paid executives in the US are Apple employees.
