Want to learn how to be like Steve Jobs? The best way, at least for Apple employees, is to enroll at Apple University, as the company aims to train its employees in the ways of its co-founder, the late Steve Jobs.
Although employees are not required to take courses at the university established by Jobs, it is recommended as a way to hone and improve skill sets. The school has morphed into a major training component for the company, which first began the concept when the company was growing exponentially and the tech business was changing rapidly.
A report from inside the program gives a number of details on the training program. While its been public knowledge, details on what exactly is taught to the employees have remained murky.
"Apple employees are discouraged from talking about the company in general, and the classes are no exception. No pictures of the classrooms have surfaced publicly," writes Brian X. Chen, a New York Times reporter, adding although he was allowed inside, interviews with instructors were not allowed.
Nevertheless, Chen was able to speak with three employees who had attended classes. At its core, the university aims to instill art, simplicity, function and beauty into the minds of the students.
"On an internal website available only to Apple staff members, employees sign up for courses tailored to their positions and backgrounds. For example, one class taught founders of recently acquired companies how to smoothly blend resources and talents into Apple. The company may also offer a course tailored specifically to employees of Beats, perhaps including its founders, Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. Neither Apple nor Beats would comment," Chen reports.
The overall goal of the university appears to be the indoctrination of the core Apple concepts established by Jobs. With professors from top universities, including MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford, Harvard and others, employees are given ample opportunity to learn from the best, in the hopes that knowledge and skill will be brought into the Apple core as employees develop their career with the company.
It could also be where employees learn and come to develop new ideas, such as the recent announcement reported by Tech Times that Apple is looking to bring its virtual assistant Siri to the computer desktop environment.
