Carl J. Yankowski (born 1948) is an American businessman who is the former CEO of
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 6 ...
and
Ambient Devices.
Early life
Yankowski attended
Butler Senior High School in
Butler, Pennsylvania
Butler is a city and the county seat of Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located north of Pittsburgh and is part of the Greater Pittsburgh region. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 13,502.
History
Butler was n ...
, graduating in 1966. He gained simultaneous degrees in electrical engineering from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
and management from the
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...
. He also took a humanities minor in Art History at
Wellesley College, as one of the first men to attend.
Early career
Upon graduation he worked as a
systems analyst for
Procter & Gamble
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer he ...
but discovered that he enjoyed leveraging both marketing and technology. He developed new products and promotional campaigns for
Pringles and
Duncan Hines
Duncan Hines (March 26, 1880 – March 15, 1959) was an American pioneer of restaurant ratings for travelers. He is best known today for the brand of food products that bears his name.
Early life
Hines was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the so ...
mixes. He then moved to
Memorex
Memorex Corp. began as a computer tape producer and expanded to become both a consumer media supplier and a major IBM plug compatible peripheral supplier. It was broken up and ceased to exist after 1996 other than as a consumer electronics bran ...
where he helped develop the first high-performance cassette tapes, and with Ella Fitzgerald worked on the "Is It Live Or Is It Memorex" campaign before joining Pepsi, expanding Mountain Dew, launching 2L plastic bottles and back-lit vending machines, and working on the three-year
Pepsi Challenge
The Pepsi Challenge is an ongoing marketing promotion run by PepsiCo since 1975. It is also the name of a cross country ski race at Giant's Ridge Ski Area in Biwabik, Minnesota, an event sponsored by Pepsi.
Method
The challenge originally took th ...
campaign for
PepsiCo, beating Coke in market share for the first consistent time.
At
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
, he helped develop the Spacemaker range with its "We Bring Good Things to Life" campaign. He then worked in the U.S. and London as divisional CEO of
Cadbury Schweppes
Cadbury, formerly Cadbury's and Cadbury Schweppes, is a British multinational confectionery company fully owned by Mondelez International (originally Kraft Foods) since 2010. It is the second largest confectionery brand in the world after Mars ...
, focused on new soft drink delivery systems.
Polaroid
Yankowski joined Polaroid Corporation in 1988 as a corporate vice president with initial responsibility for all business imaging, U.S. consumer and industrial marketing before moving to
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
as group vice president for the corporation's Asia/Pacific region. He then returned to the United States to become the president and chief operating officer of
Sony Electronics
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
in November 1993, almost doubling the U.S. businesses by $5 billion, and launching PlayStation, VAIO, CDMA phones, and DVD, as well as Direct TV, Web TV, and others. Yankowski left Sony in January 1998 "to address immediate family health issues" (his father was dying). He became president and chief executive officer of the
Reebok
Reebok International Limited () is an American fitness footwear and clothing manufacturer that is a part of Authentic Brands Group. It was established in England in 1958 as a companion company to J.W. Foster and Sons, a sporting goods company ...
Brand in September 1998, initiating cost-cutting and a turnaround, as well as a re-focus on women and fitness.
Palm
Yankowski joined
3Com
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe e ...
to head its Palm division on 13 December 1999. In his first year at Palm, he became chief executive officer, transforming the division of 3Com into a public company with a billion-dollar+ IPO and market capitalization of
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
30 billion.
Yankowski gained notoriety for his appearance on a CNBC interview on the day of the Palm IPO, during which he wore a bespoke suit embroidered with gold pinstripes. Profitable revenue increased five consecutive quarters to over $1 billion as the dot-com bubble collapsed. He left Palm on 8 November 2001 when the OS Group was spun out by the board (leaving Palm a commodity hardware player), and most technology companies were caught up in the dot-com crash, and set up a management consultancy under the name 'Westerham Group'. He led Majesco (a gaming company) for a ten-month period until he discovered the recent sales forecasts for Psychonauts and Advent Rising were dramatically missed in this essentially family-owned business. From June 2001 until February 2003 he was a director of
Novell and chairman of the board for CRF Health, then a start-up company focusing on electronic patient diaries for clinical trials. Since July 2003 he has been a non-executive director of
Informatica
Informatica is an American software development company founded in 1993. It is headquartered in Redwood City, California. Its core products include Enterprise Cloud Data Management and Data Integration. It was co-founded by Gaurav Dhillon and Di ...
and
Chase Corporation
Chase Corporation was a property development company in New Zealand that flourished in the 1980s, became devalued in the 1987 New Zealand stock market collapse, and eventually collapsed in 1989.
History
Chase Corp had a major effect on the New Ze ...
.
Ambient Devices
After Palm, he took up positions on the boards of the
Boston College business school and the
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...
and several technology and consumer product-oriented companies. In 2007, he was appointed CEO of
Ambient Devices, a small consumer electronics company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, raising funding, developing more contemporary new products, distribution, and marketing. He was asked to remove himself from the company. Yankowski is a board member of flat-panel color display pioneer Uni-Pixel, Inc. (UNXL), which has developed a potentially more efficient display method called TMOS, as well as non-fingerprint films, and unique embossing technology for touch screens and similar applications. He also represented Intel Capital on the board of Telligent in Dallas, a leading corporate social networking and analytics company.
In Media
Yankowski is portrayed by English actor
Cary Elwes
Ivan Simon Cary Elwes (; born 26 October 1962) is an English actor and writer. He is known for his leading film roles as Westley in ''The Princess Bride'' (1987), Robin Hood in '' Robin Hood: Men in Tights'' (1993), and Dr. Lawrence Gordon in ...
in the 2023 biopic ''
Blackberry
The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy ...
'' directed by
Matt Johnson.
Notes
* , ''AnnOnline'' (10 January 1997). Retrieved 22 August 2006.
Carl Yanowski, CEO, Palm T. C. Doyle, ''VARBusiness'', (10 November 2000). Retrieved 22 August 2006. - not working
Piloting Palm: The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring and the Birth of the Billion Dollar Handheld Industry. Retrieved 25 Jan 2010.
Andrew Orlowski, Shoe salesman quits PDA company ''
The Register
''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information te ...
'' (21 November 2001). Retrieved 22 August 2006.
Ex-Palm CEO Carl Yankowski tapped to head Ambient Devices ''
Engadget
''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editor ...
'', January 2, 2008.
Forbes Profile: Carl Yankowski ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...
''.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yankowski, Carl
MIT School of Engineering alumni
MIT Sloan School of Management alumni
American technology chief executives
1948 births
Living people
General Electric people