Colas to PCs
John’s journey from Pepsi to Apple
First let me correct my mistake on the authors. This book is written by
John Sculley and John Byrne. John Sculley was the then CEO of the
company.
The Halo
Effect!!! What I felt while, I was reading this book. Well a true
management book. But can be read by a true computer jerk. Why jerk!!!,
anyone who knows about Pepsi and Apple. You will just fall in love with
all the people mentioned in the book.
Well
this is the first time I am writing a review for a book, which is
fourth in my read list. The best part is, it compares the conventional
company and a modern one. John Sculley
mentioned
it as Second and Third Wave company. It all starts with a brief preview
of how Pepsi works. The rest of the book, as they say, "is history". It
focuses at a point where John enters Apple. How he rode a roller-coster
ride at apple.
Actually what made me read this book is
Apple. Now that everyone has heard of I Pod, and someone may even
possess it, apple doesn’t need any introduction. It is one of the most
innovative corporation of time. Though I Mac is still costly, but it is
the most sort for by ’’Desktop Publishers’’. In fact the term Desktop
Publishing was born during the time of Macintosh.
One of
the torch bearer for the company STEVE JOBS is most synonymous to APPLE
then anybody else. The best part of this book is, it tells how only
ideas don’t make a company. Management is equally important, or
sometimes more important, to put this ideas to reality and this is where Steve
lacked. Also how fundamentals of one company(Pepsi) doesn’t work for
other(Apple), especially with a generation gap.
What made Apple fall is the emotional bondage between John and
Steve. This made John reluctant to pull off Steve from its mistakes,
which later was out
of control. Steve began to spoil the company like anything. Well spoil
here means he was not good at management. So everything he did, which
he thought was right, took the organization towards hell. Only because
of
friendship Sculley was not able to control this. But later to save the
company Sculley had to take a strong action against Steve.
Hence briefly what Sculley is trying to tell is, though the basic
fundamentals remain the same, running an organization changes
according to different verticals. Also emotions does not play an
important role while you are the leader of the company. If things go
wrong you have to correct it that moment.