John Sculley has been one of the high-fliers in the American Corporate world. In this book, he vividly talks about his journey
from a conventional Eastern-
Management driven (also called as “second-wave” companies) setup in Pepsi to a modern and dynamic IT-product management driven setup in Apple. (Also called as the “third-wave company).
John began his career in late Sixties, where after having passed from one of the leading-B-Schools, joined as a Management trainee in Pepsi. He started with the bottling plants (a very crucial cog in the soft-drink
industry) in the US, where he learnt the essentials of business. His talent and knowledge about the industry soon brought him close to the who’s-who of Pepsi management. He was known for putting in very long hours, being very aggressive and attention to detail. He led Pepsi for the first time to beat Coke in terms of market share in soft-drink industry. This was mostly sparked by some creative thinking in terms of packaging and marketing campaign (led by the “generation Next” slogan). He exploited some of the limitations of Coke’s big size, and their unusual measurement of sales in terms of stock keeping units instead of liters of sales. John also got very crucial experience in Market Research, when he was associated with€ Nielson for sales and market analysis of soft-drink industry.
John spent some years in Europe and South America handling the Frito-lay food business that was acquired by Pepsi. He turned around the company back into profits, which made him one of the leading candidates for top position in Pepsi replacing Kendall. It was a time when he was going through a thoughtful phase in Pepsi that a headhunter approached him and gave an opportunity to be part of the Silicon Valley dream, with Apple as its CEO. After a number of months, where he spent time with Steve Sobs and Murray in Apple in Fremont, he decided to join Apple. It was a painful departure from Pepsi as he had developed excellent relationship with Kendall and other members of the board.
John Sculley in his initial days was an electronic geek and this was a time when he was entering the IT product industry to relive his dream. Steve Jobs, a 20-something school drop-out, was a great influencer on John. John was inspired by Steve and specifically an opportunity to be part of “changing the world”. John was instrumental in designing the marketing campaign for Lisa and Macintosh. He changed the paradigm of Apple from the world of Personal Computers to that of Personal Computing.
Steve Job’s pet project was Macintosh, and at the time of the release of this product in the market he influenced John on operational, tactical and strategic decisions. It became quite apparent that Apple was being divided from within and different divisions inside Apple were charting its own course. The much hyped Macintosh launch did not live through the expectations and then began a phase of downfall of Apple. Questions were raised on John Sculley’s and Steve Jobs’ credibility, and their friendship broke, much to the chagrin of Steve Jobs. The bitter rivalry was being openly displayed and the Apple board relieved Steve from some of his duties making John completely responsible for Apple’s future.
John was in a stage where he was about to give up his Apple career, but his wife egged him to carry on. In the years to come John Scully brought about a turnaround of Apple and again led it to its original heights in the area of Personal Computing by clever marketing and positioning of its products.
In his book John has highlighted the emergence of “networked” organizations, where there will be a number of stakeholders in organizations working closely with a “mother” organization such as Apple, who will build up areas such as “third-party support”, component manufacturing, OS specific software development etc.
John Sculley has clearly highlighted in the book that Knowledge is going to be one of the key factorss in the years to come and Apple will be playing a great role in this. He has highlighted that in the “third-wave” companies, innovation is going to be the key as conventional jobs will lose its importance. He has also recommended in the book, changes that can be brought in the educational system(incidentally one of the biggest market for Apple), and making it more customized or calibrated to the learning speeds of individuals with the help of the IT tools. In the epilogue of the book, John has clearly explained the fascinating evolution of the business world from the times of Renaissance to the times to come, where information will be available to everyone and will no longer be a distinguisher.
All in all, it is a must-read management book for someone who is specifically interested in IT world and wants to draw a comparison with conventional management wisdom.