#6 Recruiting John Sculley as CEO of Apple

John Sculley was vice-president (1970–1977) and president of PepsiCo (1977–1983), until he became CEO of Apple on April 8, 1983, a position he held until leaving in 1993.

Steve Jobs lured Sculley away from Pepsi because Apple wanted Sculley to apply his marketing skills to the personal computer market. Steve Jobs successfully sealed the deal after he made his legendary pitch to John: "Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

Sales at Apple increased from $800 million to $8 billion under Sculley's management, although many attribute this success to Sculley merely joining at an opportune time when Steve Jobs' vision and creations had begun to skyrocket.

At this point, a power struggle between Jobs and Sculley was becoming readily apparent. The Apple board of directors instructed Sculley to "contain" Jobs and limit his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from his leadership role at Apple. Sculley found out that Jobs had been attempting to organize a putsch and called a board meeting at which Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties. Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc. the same year.

But Sculley ultimately was forced to step down as Apple CEO because he was opposed to licensing Macintosh software and was talking to Goldman-Sachs about splitting Apple into two companies. When Sculley left in May, 1993, Apple had $2 billion in cash and $200 million in debt.

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