The American businessman and executive John Sculley He is a figure who shares opinions, especially among fanatics in the world of Ma. Sculley was Apple's CEO from 1983 to 1993 and, in those ten years, the company has gone through a real roller coaster of events including the dismissal of Steve Jobs.
In an interview with CNBC, the executive told how it was to live with Jobs and the “noble cause” that the co-founder of Apple defended. Sculley began the story by talking about how he came to be CEO of Ma, after long months of contact with Jobs.
His first contact with the co-founder of Apple was in November 1982, just after the holiday Ao de Graas (Thanksgiving). Jobs tried for months to get Sculley to work at Apple. The businessman was CEO of Pepsi at that time, until in March 1983 he gave his answer.
We had the opportunity to get to know each other very, very well, but in the end I said, "Steve, I thought about it and I'm not going to work at Apple."
Steve paused and thought for a while, and then he was 45 centimeters away from me in those days, he was in his 20s, had very dark hair and eyes, and he was right in front of my face then he said: "Do you want to sell water with sugar for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?"
Sculley took over as CEO of Apple on April 11, 1983, and there are many controversies about the impact of his work at Ma. For some people, Sculley succumbed to Apple's corporate philosophy in favor of the company's profit. The fact that, during the ten years he ran the company, the Cupertino giant's revenue jumped from $ 569 million to $ 8.3 billion.
During the time they worked together Jobs was fired from the company in 1985 and returned only in 1997, Sculley said that the most important lesson he learned from Steve was actually a characteristic of him: insatiable curiosity combined with a desire to change the world. For the executive, the impact of this type of leader like Jobs is not only seen in the company, but in society in general.
Steve's passion was to "make an impact on the universe". Those were his words. And he was willing to do whatever it took. He was willing to put his personal life aside and be incredibly demanding of the people who worked with him.
Steve Jobs, John Sculley and Steve Wozniak presenting the Apple IIcSculley inferred that these principles are responsible for both the great legacy and work left by Jobs and the difficulty of working with him. The businessman said that, days before the first Macintosh motherboard was released, Jobs did not like the way a wire was displayed on the board; an employee of the production engineering team then said that no one would notice that wire since the computer case was designed in a way that it was very difficult to get into the Macintosh box and Jobs responded categorically: “I will. Go back and redo the layout of that me-board. ”
Although extremely demanding, Sculley said that working with Jobs was also very inspiring. The executive recalled a conversation he had with Apple co-founder and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who were discussing transforming the world with technology.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates talked about their "noble cause". I had never heard the words “noble cause” in business in my life. And while I listened to them, they said: “Yes, we are going to empower individuals with tools for the mind. This will be done in what we call a personal computer, be more about software than hardware and we are going to change the world, one person at a time. ”
Sculley commented on Jobs' ability to innovate, saying that the co-founder of Ma followed a process called Zooming (in the sense of knowing when to approach a technology to simplify it and when to retreat the moment an industry collides with the other).
Steve would say that simplification is sophisticated, which means that once you know how the dots connect even if it interferes in sectors that have never been connected to one another before, you need to simplify it and make the solution so simple for that anyone can use their tools and feel motivated to do amazing things with them.
Finally, Sculley said that he carries these lessons and experiences into his current projects and businesses. In 2013, the entrepreneur participated in the creation of the company RxAdvance, and the company's objectives are inspired by Jobs' philosophy of simplifying extremely complex issues for all users and customers.
Check out the full story of John Sculley's story at Apple for his contact with Steve Jobs.
via The Loop
