Alfred P. Sloan, known as President and CEO of General Motors was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1875. His father was a prosperous businessman. Sloan is an electrical engineer and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1895. While attending MIT he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity.
Sloan joined as a draftsman in the Hyatt Rolling Bearing Company at Harrison, N.J, a company that makes roller and ball bearings. At the age of 26 he became president and general manager of Hyatt, which was running in loses. Sloan brought drastic changes to the firm by moving into the manufacture of steel roller bearings for the automobile industry and eventually became the owner of the company. In 1916 Hyatt merged with United Motors Corporation and finally became part of General Motors Corporation. In 1918 he became Vice-President to the GM, then President (1923), and finally Chairman of the Board (1937). He retired as GM chairman in1956 and died in 1966.
The major changes he brought to GM include establishing annual styling changes (planned obsolescence), confronted its workforce, established a pricing structure for (from lowest to highest priced) Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac which is referred to as the ladder of success not having competition with each other. With these changes GM became the largest and most successful company the world had ever known. In 1930 GM became the sales leader in the Industry and retained this position for over 70 years.