He then moved to Memorex 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 campaign for PepsiCo, beating Coke in market share for the first consistent time.

He then returned to the United States to become the president and CEO of Sony Electronics in November 1993, almost doubling the U.S. businesses by $5 billion, and launching PlayStation, VAIO, CDMA phones, and DVD, as well as DirectTV, Web TV, and others.

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.

He led Majesco (a gaming company)[7] 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.

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.