Alfred P. Jr. Sloan – 1875-1966

In 1920, when he was vice-president of General Motors (he later became chairman), Sloan introduced a new concept in the marketing of technological goods: planned obsolescence. With the automobile market stagnant by the end of the 1910s and the pace of genuine technological innovation insufficiently rapid to grow the market, Sloan proposed a program of annual stylistic alterations, which (he believed) would give consumers the feeling that the automobile they owned was obsolete and would therefore motivate the purchase of a new model. Planned obsolescence stimulated GM growth, but it also diverted corporate research from significant technological innovation to mere cosmetic change. Later in the century, this would have a profoundly negative effect on the American auto industry.