Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Meeting Gil Amelio, the Apple CEO before Steve Jobs Returned

I saw a very funny article about what Steve Jobs thought of Gil Amelio, who was CEO at Apple when Jobs returned.  The article quotes from the upcoming biography written by Walter Isaacson. Jobs had an extremely low opinion of Amelio and there was a funny exchange between Larry Ellison and Jobs about Amelio in the book.

I had a brief encounter with Gil Amelio while working for the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1995.  Amelio came to speak to a small gathering, and while he spoke, he sweated through his shirt, and repeatedly scratched his chest, almost as if he had a nervous tick.  It was difficult to watch, and gave off the impression that he simply didn't have the command you'd expect from someone in the role he had.

Being the eternal optimistic, I stored this memory away in the "if he can be CEO, then there's hope for me" file.

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