. Compare Jobs' strategies versus Sculley, Amelio and other Apple leaders and evaluate their rationale and results?

When comparing Steve Jobs’ strategies with John Sculley, Gilbert Amelio, and other Apple leaders, we are truly able to see the strength in Jobs’ leadership style and vision, and how it impacted Apple’s performance. While each leader had his own strengths to bring to the table, ultimately, they could not match Jobs’ charisma and drive to design industry-changing products (Exhibit 1A).

Exhibit 1A: Apple Leadership (1983-2011)

In 1983, John Sculley was tasked with increasing Apple’s market share, and his strategy was to produce low cost products with mass-market appeal. He was focused on competing with I.B.M. in the household-computer market, so reducing costs and prices were critical elements of his overall plan. During the time Sculley took over Apple, computers were being sold “like soap,” a household commodity, which validated his strategic goals for Apple in 1983 (Hayes, 1983). Although he was successful to some extent and led Apple through a brief “golden age,” Sculley was removed as CEO after a poor first quarter in 1993. (Hombry, 2002).

After Sculley, Michael Spindler took the reigns as Apple CEO. Before taking on this role in the US, Spindler was the President of Apple Europe; he earned this role by being a great strategist. When he assumed the role as CEO, Spindler had two goals: to increase Apple’s market share and increase its competitiveness. To realize these goals, Spindler focused on reducing costs, but he did so at the expense of hundreds of employees. With the large layoffs, reduced employee perks, and radical company reorganization, Apple employee morale fell to an all time low. This was not conducive to producing innovative products, and reduced Apple’s share prices.

In 1996, Gilbert Amelio briefly took control of