Another Business School Trophy

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I read a book called "The Cola Wars - The Other Guy Blinked" written by the former Pepsi CEO.
As he ticked off the "strategic" decisions he'd made, they all seemed like no brainers to me.

I sometimes read business books. In other cases, I collect them as oddities, like buying the diet book of a celebrity who died from an eating disorder, which I could but did not do. (points to anyone who can name the book/author)

One book of interest is "Prophets in the Dark", by a business consultant and the CEO of Xerox in the 1980's. It is all about beating back Japanese competition in Xerox's core business.

Former Xerox CEO Kearns and business consultant Nadler here relate how Xerox marketed the exclusively patented plain-paper copying machine into a billion-dollar business in the 1960s, then became complacent and fell monumentally behind world competition by the early '80s. But under Kearns's leadership and a successfully executed program of product and service quality, Xerox became "the first major American company targeted by the Japanese to regain market share from them."

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.

Of course, "Prophets" is selling for as little as $.01 and "Fumbling" is selling for about $18, so it looks like market forces really do work.

Actually, service and quality are important concepts, but considering the elephant in the room, I think that Kearns should have written the "Fumbling" book instead.

[tw]

Its no accident that John Akers of IBM - who coined the expression 'computer literacy' - could not use a computer. Aker's was a classic MBA. He was most computer illiterate. In 1991, his own IBM corporate offices only had 1983 IBM XT computers with CGA monitors. That's an original 1981 IBM 8088 PC with a hard drive. We know how Akers nearly destroyed IBM. He used business school techniques.

A commentary from RichLevy's "Fumbling the Future" citation all but says where MBAs were in highest concentrations:

In 1984 we did an internal survey of middle and upper management regarding use of the applications for the Star/Distributed Net. It found that while 76-percent of first and second level management used these applications on a daily or multiple-weekly basis, less than 10-percent of upper and executive management did so (the figure was under 5-percent on returns from Rochester and Stamford). Is this evidence of knowledge or having the "best intentions"? Those of us who did have the knowledge of the potential benefits were in middle management and could see those benefits to our own organisations at that time. We reported on these benefits, talked about them, begged people to come and see for themselves...for years...nothing happened.

Fortunately Apple Computer rescued Star from Xerox to create MacIntosh. MBAs are taught to be so anti-innovative as to not even understand the advantages of a Mac. Classic symptoms of business school management. "Fumbling the Future" had long been 'must read' for anyone who learns business from reality.

[tw]

From the BBC of 2 Apr 2006:

Alcatel and Lucent agree to merge
French phone equipment maker Alcatel has agreed to merge with US firm Lucent Technologies, creating a company with sales of 21bn euros (£15bn; $25bn).

The merger will take place via a stock swap, though Alcatel shareholders will control 60% of the new company

[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.