Welcome to our collection of insightful quotes by John Sculley! John Sculley is a renowned American businessman and entrepreneur, best known for his tenure as the CEO of Apple Inc. during the 1980s and early 1990s. Born on April 6, 1939, Sculley’s career spans across various industries, including technology, marketing, and healthcare. His leadership at Apple brought about significant changes, shaping the company’s trajectory during a critical period of its history.
Throughout his career, John Sculley has shared numerous pearls of wisdom on innovation, leadership, and business strategy. His quotes offer valuable insights into navigating the complexities of the corporate world and fostering innovation in a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned executive, or simply seeking inspiration, Sculley’s words resonate with timeless wisdom and practical advice. Discover his thoughts and perspectives on a range of topics below, and feel free to incorporate them into your projects, presentations, or daily reflections.
I never claimed to be a computer engineer, but I did train as an industrial designer, and I am a consumer marketer, and I am very comfortable dealing with complex businesses and complexity in general and simplifying it – basically a systems designer. John Sculley
People who take risks are the people you’ll lose against. John Sculley
I have found that I always learn more from my mistakes than from my successes. If you aren’t making some mistakes, you aren’t taking enough chances. John Sculley
I think that the health care industry is so complex that it doesn’t necessarily start with a single killer app. You go back to the early days of the personal computer – when I joined the industry, we really didn’t know what the killer app was going to be. John Sculley
Over the years, I have developed a pretty good Rolodex. John Sculley
I didn’t appreciate, coming out of corporate America… what it meant to a founder, the creator of the Macintosh, to be asked to step down from the very division that he created to lead the very product that he believed was going to change the world. John Sculley
Everything at Apple can be best understood through the lens of designing. Whether it’s designing the look and feel of the user experience, or the industrial design, or the system design, and even things like how the boards were laid out. John Sculley
We expect teachers to handle teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, and the failings of the family. Then we expect them to educate our children. John Sculley
My guess is that Apple won’t just pass Microsoft in market capitalization, but will go way beyond it. John Sculley
I think that Apple has revolutionized every other consumer industry; why not television? The complexity of the experience of using the television gets more and more complicated. So it seems exactly the sort of problem that if anyone is going to change the experience of what the first principles are, it is going to be Apple. John Sculley
We see healthcare shifting from a procedure reimbursement, where in this country doctors are reimbursed for how many procedures they conduct, to a world where people will be reimbursed for the outcomes – did the patient actually get better, and what was the total cost of the cycle of care. John Sculley
Is there anyone out there who is the next Steve Jobs? I think Jeff Bezos is pretty close. He is very smart. He is extremely creative. He has completely reinvented the way in which commerce is done online. John Sculley
Apple is so focused on its vision that it does things in a very careful, deliberate way. John Sculley
One thing about Apple is they have these fanboys – as I always say, ‘Sell to the people who love us.’ For example when they came up with iPad mini, everyone who had an iPad went out and bought a mini as well. John Sculley
I’m an optimist. You can’t be an entrepreneur if you’re not essentially an optimist, so I’m an optimist by nature. John Sculley
Apple and Samsung are selling in such high volumes, and they’re vertically integrated more and more, that it’s very, very hard for anyone to compete against Apple and Samsung in the high-volume part of the smartphone or tablet market. John Sculley
Implementers aren’t considered bozos anymore. John Sculley
Health care missed the PC and Internet revolutions, but it can’t afford to miss the cloud and mobile revolution. John Sculley
If we hadn’t put a man on the moon, there wouldn’t be a Silicon Valley today. John Sculley
The healthcare industry has never had a priority on user experience because there has been little competition. Prices have never been transparent. John Sculley
Stay the course and keep building an integrated Apple ecosystem of iPhone + iPod + iMac + iTunes + App Store + Apple TV. No one has yet demonstrated they understand how to create an ‘experience-based ecosystem’ as well as Apple. John Sculley
Apple makes really good products, and Samsung makes really good products. It’s really a two-horse race. Where I think Apple is exposed: the price points of Apple’s products are just so high by comparison with Samsung’s. John Sculley
When I left Apple, it had $2 billion of cash. It was the most profitable computer company in the world – not just personal computers – and Apple was the number one selling computer. John Sculley
Timing in life is everything. John Sculley
I think that televisions are unnecessarily complex. The irony is that as the pictures get better and the choice of content gets broader, that the complexity of the experience of using the television gets more and more complicated. John Sculley
As a brand marketer, I’m a big believer in ‘branding the customer experience,’ not just selling the service. John Sculley
The only thing I would say is, I think there’s a lot of future value in Blackberry, but without experienced people who have run this type of business, and without a strategic plan, it would be really challenging. John Sculley
Ross Perot came and visited Apple several times and visited the Macintosh factory. Ross was a systems thinker. John Sculley
The launch of iPhone is very possibly bigger than the launch of the first Apple II or the first Mac. Steve Jobs’s genius is his ability to use technology to create products that define fundamental cultural shifts. John Sculley
The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious. John Sculley
Health innovation, enabled by digital technologies to build big consumer service brands, is an incredibly interesting, complex problem to work on. John Sculley
Our primary goal in the consumer health service companies I back is helping them create an uncompromisingly great consumer experience. John Sculley
It’s suddenly practical to do very high quality video wirelessly over mobile devices, and we’re just in the early days of that. John Sculley
The Mac defined ‘personal technology’, and the iPhone defines ‘intimate technology’ as a convergence of communications, content and location. John Sculley
Healthcare has been the last major industry that hasn’t been touched by technology in terms of productivity and consumer adoption in the way so many other industries have. John Sculley
In many cases, jobs that used to be done by people are going to be able to be done through automation. I don’t have an answer to that. That’s one of the more perplexing problems of society. John Sculley
There are just moments when all the stars are aligned for breakthrough products. John Sculley
