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Someone ought to write a comparative study of Scully's time at Apple with the successful turnaround of IBM led by Lou Gerstner, whose prior experience was at RJ
by rst 9y ago
Someone ought to write a comparative study of Scully's time at Apple with the successful turnaround of IBM led by Lou Gerstner, whose prior experience was at RJR Nabisco.
- xapata 9y agoConveniently, a comparison of two companies such as that can ignore all counter-examples. After all, it's a case study, not a boring statistical survey.
- guiambros 9y agoSpeaking of case study, Louis Gerstner's account of the turn-around is a great read [1]. I read when it was published, so not sure it has aged well; need to check it again someday. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Who-Says-Elephants-Cant-Dance/dp/0060523808 https://www.amazon.com/Who-Says-Elephants-Cant-Dance/dp/0060...
- YZF 9y agoWhat people have studied is how much difference CEOs make. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10441713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10441713 Lou had 1993 until 2002. Scully had 1983–1993. I think Lou had the .com boom on his side. Scully not so much. There's definitely a deflection point around 1994 where everyone did a lot better. I guess the question is how did IBM and Apple perform relative to some benchmark under those leaders and even that could be just luck. Microsoft certainly outperformed both thees companies by a huge amount of this time period: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=logarithmic&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1495171493864&chddm=3270&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NASDAQ:AAPL;NASDAQ:MSFT&cmptdms=0;0&q=NYSE:IBM&&fct=big&ei=o4EeWfvdJ4q3jAHE4regDQ https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&... So compared to MSFT both were huge failures. [EDIT: it's interesting that at least during some Scully's tenure APPL tracks MSFT fairly closely... So at least during those years he was as good as Bill Gates? :) ]