John Sculley has spoken to major business audiences around the world including senior executive groups . . . Sculley has been a keynoter at many trade association and special events . . .
John Sculley
Former CEO of Apple Computers, Pepsi, High-Tech Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist
Fee Range
Please contact us for pricingTravels From
FL, US
John Sculley
Biography
John Sculley is one of America’s best-known business leaders, with one foot in the storied history of Apple technology and the other planted firmly in 21st century innovations that are changing the way the world does business today and will do in the future.
In 1970, Coca-Cola Co outsold by Pepsi Cola Co in US packaged goods retail sales by 10:1.
John Sculley led a decade of major innovations: The first plastic soft drink bottle, Creating forty
Co-op plastic bottle blowing plants with Pepsi’s 525 franchised bottlers. Aligning all Pepsi bottlers territories into ‘Chain Trading Areas’ with the largest food chain’s marketing territories. Reinvented and designed instore merchandizing display equipment resulting in increasing retail shelf space for soft drink beverage sections by 300% across US. Developed and launched The Pepsi Challenge which became recognized as the most innovative consumer marketing campaign of the decade. In 1978, John Sculley became Pepsi-Cola Co’s youngest CEO. In the late 1970’s, the ‘Cola Wars had achieved folklore status in marketing and Pepsi Challenge was studied in every business school. By 1980, Pepsi had passed Coca-Cola to become the largest selling consumer packaged product in the US.
In 1982, Steve Jobs recruited John Sculley to be his partner and asked John to become Apple’s new CEO. After 5 months getting to know each other well, John Sculley turned Steve Jobs down. Not giving up easily, Steve Jobs looked Sculley directly in the eyes and said, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or come with me and change the world?” A week later, John Sculley was the new Apple CEO, saying in reflection, “I have an insatiable curiosity and I’m a risk taker. I didn’t want to look back and say, what did I miss”.
In his 10 years as Apple CEO John Sculley, Apple board first told John to turn around the rapidly declining revenue of the Apple II, the only positive cash flow that Apple would have for the next 3 years. In parallel, John worked together with Steve Jobs to launch the Macintosh computer and desktop publishing. 3 years later, after Steve left Apple, John introduced the first Macintosh multimedia personal computers and later launched Apple on a new journey into mobile devices beginning with acquiring control of the ARM microchip company and setting up an ARM mobile chip laboratory at 1 Kendall Square next to the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. This is where we developed the first ARM operating system and first graphic-based software for the ARM chip that would later power over 8 billion mobile phone devices.
By the end of John Sculley’s decade as Apple CEO, Macintosh had become the largest selling hardware PC in the world and Apple’s revenue had grown over 1000%.
For 7 years John Sculley was on the advisory board the MIT Media Lab and the also on the board of overseers at Wharton Business School. He received Wharton’s highest honor, The Joseph Wharton Award for Outstanding Leadership. He was selected by Financial News Network as marketing CEO of the Decade when he was Apple CEO. John Sculley received an honorary PhD in science from Johns-Hopkins University and honorary PhD degrees from 10 other universities. In 2015 he was awarded The Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
After leaving Apple, John Sculley became an early investor and/or co-founded many successful software companies including Hotwire, Metro PCS, Intralinks, Zeta Global, Rally Health, MDLIVE,
RxAdvance, nirvanaHealth, and Eternal Health. For the past 10 years, John Sculley has worked with many talented entrepreneurs helping them build innovative AI, machine learning, and robotic process automation solutions that can save hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud, waste, and avoidable costs by focusing on modernizing complex core transactional tasks and replacing traditional expensive legacy software systems with platform automation solutions.
John Sculley is author of ‘Odyssey, from Pepsi to Apple’ and, ‘Moonshot’ Game Changing Strategies to Build Billion Dollar Businesses”. John Sculley is married to Diane Sculley who is also his partner in Sculley Family Office.
John Sculley
Featured Keynote Programs
Business Leadership
How I think about business leadership...
Some executives have built very successful careers by focusing on consistent, year-in year-out, operational improvements. I particularly admire those legendary leaders with exceptional people skills who have created great executive teams and best-in-class human capital across their companies. While expansion strategies traditionally had been the prevue of the large public companies; in this decade, we’ve seen several private equity firms become masters-of-this-universe by combining balance sheet leverage with transformational business models; then parachuting in experienced teams of highly motivated executives with the mission to compress the time to distinctive shareholder returns through deliberate and decisive actions crafted by the some of the smartest business consultants. Each of these examples embrace admirable themes, but my life’s quest has been centered around a very singular mission to use innovation and system design to create superior end-customer experience and disruptive, game changing, business models. My mission has been shaped by curiosity, innovation, and transformational leadership.
Why are Americans so good at innovation and entrepreneurial exploits?
We are brought up to believe that anything is possible and there are no barriers to one’s opportunities to succeed at whatever one sets one’s mind to do. Individual freedom to push the boundaries beyond the safe path; a classless society that is comfortable with empowering individuals to try new things; and a culture where making mistakes is part of one’s necessary learning experience and won’t be an indelible penalty on one’s career - these are the core elements of our business value system.
Contrast these first principles with other very desirable, but different societies.
Not everyone expects an equal opportunity to succeed in business nor is business success held in the same high esteem as a life priority that it is held in the United States. For example, Europeans draw a careful delineation between their business and personal life. Many find it distasteful to mix the two and are especially curious with American executives’ comfort zone of intruding cell phone calls and an always-on Blackberry into one’s family lifestyle?
Asians are exceptionally hard working and many are much better educated than Americans. However, Asian cultures are tuned to collective success rather than individual exceptionalism. Consequently, while there are numerous examples of extraordinary organizational accomplishments, Asian business success is more often centered on adapting innovation; continual evolutionary improvements; developing cheaper, faster, better work processes; and a caution against individual innovation or individual risk taking.
In Global Economy 2.0, these traditional mores are changing fast. Foreigners who have worked in the USA are returning home with lessons learned and they are transplanting the first principles of American entrepreneurialism into their faster growing emerging markets. Throughout my long career I’ve worn many hats. I’ve been a middle manager, an industrial designer, an R&D executive, a marketing executive, a business leader, a public company CEO, a best selling author, an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist, a senior advisor to public corporations, a board member, worked closely with first-tier investment funds, and today spend much of my time traveling Global Economy 2.0 as a mentor to some very successful serial entrepreneurs.
Let me share 10 transformational observations...
I always learned more from my mistakes than my successes
Being a successful functional executive or even an accomplished COO, doesn’t necessarily prepare one to be a CEO
The hardest part of a CEO’s job is not deciding what to do; its figuring out what not to do
Transformation is a team sport
Defining the right questions is harder than finding right answers
The most successful transformational leaders I have known were more motivated by making a difference than by making a lot of money
Don’t underestimate how important curiosity, hard work and good luck have been for the most successful transformational leaders
Timing in life can mean everything
Transformational leaders are highly skilled at transferring their own belief system to those around them
Its amazing how much you can accomplish if you don’t worry about who gets the credit ( Ronald Reagan )
Power Shifts
Getting Used to the New Normal
Audiences learn about the power shifts that are transforming business and why we are only at the beginning. When you look around at today's business world, what new ground rules do you see? How is the power in the marketplace shifting, and what do these shifts mean to your business? Just as importantly, how can you not simply respond, but take advantage of them?
Why Big Ideas Happen in Small Companies
Virtualization of project teams and a shift to innovation through collaboration are changing the ground rules for how companies, big and small, are learning to adapt to a world where business transformation has become the norm. Few executives have the global reach of experience in so many major industries as John Sculley, who explores these themes drawing from his own experience as a public company CEO, as a marketing innovator, high technology visionary, global financial services leader, and successful private equity investor.
Customers-in-Control vs. Producers-in-Control
Enabling customers to not just expect, but demand the best products, best services, customized, at the lowest price and ASAP.
John Sculley
Featured Review
John Sculley
Featured Articles & Resources
Former Apple CEO, John Sculley on 'Steve Jobs' movie portrayal
Former Apple CEO and President/CEO of Pepsi John Sculley has long been a trailblazer in the business and corporate world. In addition to John’s achievements as a marketing...
How Do You Choose the BEST Speaker for Your Event?
We’ve had 30 years and 40,000 events to perfect the process—and we’ll do it for free.
