Steve Jobs has been granted 347 patents in the past decade, many awarded posthumously. By contrast, Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page only have a combined 27 over the same period.

It’s a telling statistic about how Apple and Google operate differently. Apple is driven largely by a centralized development structure, stemming from its fabled design studio, whereas Google has a more distributed, open-source approach to new products. And to get a real picture of how this plays out organizationally, the Portland-based data visualization studio Periscopic created a series of visualizations custom for Co.Design, which compares “innovation signatures” charting the last 10 years of patents filed at Apple and Google.

Left: Apple, Right: Google

To understand what you’re looking at, know that each blob is a patent inventor, and since many patents have multiple inventors, each line is a link between an inventor and co-inventors.

From this view, Apple looks like a big ball of tinker toys, while Google is a monotonous, cellular blob more akin to the Borg. And while you can only tell so much of a company’s structure from just its patents, Periscopic believes it has spotted a clear narrative in the images.

“Over the past 10 years Apple has produced 10,975 patents with a team of 5,232 inventors, and Google has produced 12,386 with a team of 8,888,” writes Wes Bernegger, data explorer at Periscopic. Those numbers are, frankly, pretty similar in terms of proportion. “The most notable difference we see is the presence of the group of highly connected, experienced ‘super inventors’ at the core of Apple compared to the more evenly dispersed innovation structure in Google,” he continues. “This seems to indicate a top-down, more centrally controlled system in Apple vs. potentially more independence and empowerment in Google.”

Apple (detail)

The theory makes a lot of sense. Apple’s top-secret design lab, long led by Jonathan Ive, has given birth to the company’s very few, very profitable products. And inside Apple’s innovation footprint, you’ll spot Ive, along with the names of basically every under-celebrated designer in the inner circle, including Eugene Whang, Christopher Stringer, Bart Andre, and Richard Howarth, who now leads hardware development at Apple and is largely responsible for the design of every iPhone you’ve seen.

Google (detail)

Google, on the other hand, has a relatively flat organizational structure of many small teams filled with empowered individuals. (The company even attempted to wipe out all management back in 2002, but since reinstated the idea.) All of this can be seen in their innovation signature, of course. By patents, Googlers all look pretty equal, dispersed relatively evenly.