Exactly - Ive was planning to resign until Jobs made him VP. Apple were literally days away from losing him. Were it not for Jobs' insight, taste and autocratic approach, we probably would never have heard of Ive. Nokia lost their top designer last month, for fairly obvious reasons[1]. Google's "20% time" led to Gmail, Google News, Adsense and Orkut - you have to wonder how many products Microsoft engineers might have developed given half the chance.

[1] http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/09/13/anssi-vanjoki-nokias-sma...