Sunday, October 05, 2008

ODYSSEY PEPSI to APPLE

Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple - John A. Byrne

Colas to PCs
A 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.


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