What can Steve Jobs teach us about the future

The year was 1983 and Steve Jobs was aggressively  pursuing then PepsiCo president John Sculley, Carmine Gallo tells us in his book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. But why don’t I let Carmine narrate the rest of this remarkable story?

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Apple desperately wanted to bring in someone with Scullery’s marketing and managing experience, but despite Steve’s charm, Sculley failed to budge. The position would require that Sculley relocate his family to the West Coast, and it paid less then he wanted. One sentence would change everything. One sentence that would transform Apple, shift the trajectory of Sculley’s career, and begin Job’s amazing path from whiz kid to failure to hero and, finally, to legend. In his book Odyssey, Sculley recounts the conversation that would lead to his decision to take the job. The conversation also provided one of the most famous quotes in the history of corporate America.

According to Sculley, “We were on the balcony’s west side, facing the Hudson River, when he [Jobs] finaly asked me directly:’Are you going to come to Apple?’ ‘Steve,’ I said, ‘I really love what you are doing. I’m exited by it; how could anyone not be captivated? But it just does not make sense. Steve, I’d love to be an adviser to you, to help you in any way. But I don’t think I can come to Apple.'”

Sculley said Jobs’ head dropped; he paused and stared at the ground. Jobs then looked up and issued a challenge to Sculley that would “haunt” him. Jobs said, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” Sculley said it was as if someone delivered a stiff blow to his stomach.
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Twenty seven years later, in 2010, during his TED talk presentation, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman said: “We think of our future as anticipated memories.” Seeing the future as anticipated memories is a very interesting point of view, eh? I enjoy talking about it and hence could talk about it for hours, but instead let me ask you this: What vivid and anticipated memories are your products/services calling to mind? Why is this important? Because you plant the seed today to reap the benefits tomorrow.