don’t know where—that there was something, not immoral,
about business, but a sense that you had to play the edges in or-
der to be successful. I think a lot of people feel that way. The
business school was a tremendous release, because everything I
was taught at the business school said that’s not true. The way
to be successful is to be straight.”
The education of former Xerox executive Renn Zaphi-
ropoulos, who founded Versatec, a major producer of electro-
static printers, began at home: “I was brought up in Egypt by
Greek parents. My father was a sea captain, a pilot in the Suez
Canal. He didn’t have any collegiate degrees, but he’d been
everywhere and was a heavy reader. He used to say, ‘Your house
is your university.’ He was a poet. Instead of going to church,
we all listened to classical music on Sundays. His advice to me
was never to do anything because other people did it, but be-
cause it made good sense to me. I was a good student, not
straight A’s, but good. Straight-A students never seem to get
over it. I had a lot of other interests. I studied painting, com-
posed music, did some woodworking, wrote poems.... It’s
easy enough to learn marketing, selling, engineering, whatever.
It’s harder to learn how to optimize your own performance and
that of your subordinates. It’s vital to possess an adequate un-
derstanding of the first principles of human behavior in order
to perform as optimum supervisors and directors of people.”
John Sculley, like Jim Burke, believes in formal education and
took an MBA. Sculley’s curriculum vitae is well known. He left
Pepsico after a very successful run when Apple co-founder Steve
Jobs challenged him by asking whether he really wanted to
spend the rest of his life selling sugar water or he wanted a
chance to change the world. Sculley was CEO of Apple when he
told me he saw genuine and valuable links between education
Knowing the World