John Sculley: “I have made so many mistakes, we don’t have time to go through them”
There are many people within the tech and digital industry, mostly middle-aged men, who think they know where the future is heading. Some are clueless, some are intelligent and speak eloquently on the matter, but few, like John Sculley understand it.
Speaking about the proliferation of technology and the infiltration of sensors into every day devices, John Sculley believes “we are in an era of mobility where social media is changing the world. There are more sensors collecting all kinds of data and customers are in control because of all this data”.
As most of the major brands launch smart watches and wearable gadgets, there is a lot of machine-to-machine innovation that will connect different aspects of our lives to create the smart cities that many countries are aspiring to.
“Companies like Apple and Google are trying to lock customers into their ecosystems which will become pervasive. Data is becoming more and more valuable. Technology will touch our lives in ways that are not visible,” said Mr Sculley.
He may be best known for “firing” Steve Jobs (he didn’t, he demoted him), but John Sculley has had a far more illustrious career than his stint at Apple (which he turned from a $800m business to a $8bn one). He is a marketing genius who became Pepsi’s youngest president and now, at the age of 75 he is touring the emerging markets to launch Obi Mobiles, an affordable smartphone company he has co-founded.
He is planning to apply his marketing know-how across these markets, which includes the Middle East to drive up sales and build brand loyalty.
“Marketing is like sculpting in clay, you don’t start off with all the right answers, you have to ask the right questions,” he said. “You listen, you observe and you adjust. It’s a creative process.”
“Apple is as much a cult as a company,” he said and it is this sort of marketing and aspiration that Mr Sculley is looking to emulate at Obi Mobiles.
I met John Sculley at the launch of Obi Mobiles in Dubai. His wife of almost two years, Diane to whom his marriage he described as the proudest moment of his life, is constantly by his side.
His stamina would put most people half or three quarters his age to shame. He is a capitalist to his core, believing it “encourages growth, creativity and instils aspirations to participate fully in building things”.
He has previously admitted that ousting Steve Jobs was a mistake, but it’s not his only one.
“I have so many mistakes, we don’t have the time to go through them. You only learn from your mistakes, you never learn from your successes. IF anything, the biggest risk is when you are successful, you become a victim of that success because you believe you did something brilliantly well and then you later discover you were just plain lucky.”
thamid@thenational.ae
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