Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Sloan initially studied electrical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute before transferring to and graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1895. While at MIT, he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity. In 1898, he married Irene Jackson of Roxbury, Massachusetts; the couple had no children.
Sloan began his career at Hyatt Roller Bearing in 1899, becoming its president and owner after his father and another investor bought the company. Oldsmobile was Hyatt’s first automotive customer, and the Ford Model T also used Hyatt bearings, with over half of the company’s production going to Ford at one point. In 1916, Hyatt merged into United Motors Company, which subsequently became part of General Motors, and Sloan became a vice-president at GM. He later became president in 1923, and chairman of the board in 1937.
During his tenure at GM, Sloan introduced financial statistics such as return on investment, brought to GM by Donaldson Brown, a protege of GM vice-president John J. Raskob. Raskob had come to GM as an advisor to Pierre S. du Pont and the du Pont corporation, who were principal investors in GM. Sloan is credited with establishing annual styling changes, leading to the concept of planned obsolescence, and creating the “ladder of success” pricing structure. In 1919, he and his deputies created the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, a financing arm that pioneered the auto loan credit system.
In the 1930s, GM faced a significant labor dispute culminating in the Flint sit-down strike. Sloan, averse to the violence associated with Ford’s labor relations, favored espionage to monitor union activity, but found it ineffective against the strike. The strike ultimately legitimized the United Auto Workers as the bargaining representative for GM workers.
Sloan retired as GM chairman on April 2, 1956. His memoir, My Years with General Motors, was completed around this time, but its publication was delayed for nearly a decade due to concerns from GM’s legal staff about potential antitrust implications. It was finally published in 1964. He died in 1966.
Sloan was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1975. The Alfred P. Sloan Museum, showcasing the evolution of the automobile industry, is located in Flint, Michigan. Sloan also maintained an office in 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York.
Beyond his work at GM, Sloan established the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1934, which funded programs in business management, including the Sloan Fellows program at MIT, Cornell University, Stanford, and the London Business School. The foundation also supported the Sloan-Kettering Institute and Cancer Center in New York. According to Sloan, GM’s continued industrial production for the Nazi government was merely sound business practice, and he defended this strategy to shareholders in 1939. He predicted a postwar economic boom, anticipating workers' savings and pent-up demand, and his prediction proved accurate.
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