Colas to PCs. Review on Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple - John A. Byrne

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.