Exactly 79 years ago, specifically on April 6, 1939, New YorkJohn Sculley, a business and marketing genius, was born in 1991. Before joining the Cupertino company, he worked for the Pepsi brand, for which he created a successful marketing campaign called Pepsi Generation, through which he was able to convince consumers that drinking a sugary drink is a matter of style. Then, in 1983, he stepped into a technology company, which he led for ten years. He even credited the creation of a revolutionary device called Newton MessagePad.
During Sculley's ten years at the California giant, sales of personal computers increased. But the public remembers a man named Sculley primarily because of his controversial decisions he made in the sales structure. He departed from the structure set by Steve Jobs.
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Before boarding AppSculley had no experience selling technology products. Jobs tried to get Sculley to join his company for weeks, but he was rejected.onec asked: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling fresh water or do you want to change the world?"
Jobs was looking for someone who didn't understand computers at all and therefore wouldn't change the direction Jobs had set. They had a fairly good relationship at first, but thenonec their opinions began to differ significantly, untilonec Jobs left the company in 1985 because Sculley stripped him of almost all responsibility and decision-making rights.
Sculley held on to the boss's chair Appuntil 1993. He was able to increase sales of Apple computers from $800 million to $8 billion, and thus computers became Apple II and the Macintosh became the company's best-selling computers.
Newton MessagePad and Knowledge Navigator
"One of the things that occurred to me was that society should be divided into what society is supposed to do," Sculley said. “There was one contingent that wanted to Apple was more of a computer company. They wanted to open up the architecture and license it. There was another contingent, of which I was a part, that wanted to take the methodology Applu (user experience and the like) and move to a new generation of products like Newton.”
Sculley was in AppHe was considered an outsider who didn't have the world vision that Jobs had. Yet, during his time as CEO, he oversaw some amazing R&D projects. One of them was the Newton, often considered Sculley's Macintosh. Sculley wanted to introduce a new product line that would change the game.
Check out what the Newton MessagePad looked like:
Gallery
"It was Sculley's Macintosh," Frank O'Mah saidoney, one of the marketing managers Applu, who worked on the Newton project. "Sculley had an opportunity to do what Steve did, but in his own product category."
Although the Newton was not very successful, it was the predecessor to today's iPhone, which is Applu earns the most. Sculley also created a project called Knowledge NavigatorSculley was convinced that portable computers with touch screens would become mainstream during the 1990s. He was wrong by two decades, but the concept of Knowledge The Navigator was a vision of the future and a precursor to today's iPads.
Sculley left the company in 1993, when the company's profits, sales, and stock price declined. But he remained with Applu as chairman until 1996.
Source: Cult of Mac, MacWorld
