[tw]

Originally Posted by richlevy

I don't know if there is anything in that book about giving up a dozen or more of the most influential patents related to personal computers and the Internet that would have been worth hundreds of billions of dollars, which Fumbling the Future addresses.

"Fumbling the Future" is considered 'must read' for anyone who would understand economics, markets, and how MBAs stifle innovation. From Marketwatch.com on 4 Mar 2008:

H-P to unveil big revamp in its famed labs
No technology company wants to end up with great research that it fails to commercialize.

Silicon Valley is too familiar with the failure of the research lab previously known as Xerox PARC to capitalize on its early innovations for the personal computer in the 1980s. Their work provided the seeds for the point-and-click user interface commercialized first by Apple Inc. and then Microsoft Corp., and Xerox got only Apple shares.

"All the MBAs read about 'Fumbling the Future' at Xerox PARC," said David Patterson, an inventor and professor in the computer science department at the University of California, Berkeley, referring to a book on Xerox PARC. Even though PARC went on to innovate in its core businesses, such as developing laser printing, its storied failure lives on in the Valley.

Amid this backdrop, Hewlett-Packard Co. will unveil a big push to ensure that its famed research group, H-P Labs, about a mile from PARC, contributes more to the printer and computer giant's bottom line. H-P Labs, PARC, SRI and IBM's Almaden Research Center are the elders among the Valley's research institutions that are now all confronting new ways to turn some of their research into commercially viable projects at a faster pace.