{"id":1396,"date":"2022-05-24T09:25:11","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T16:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2022-05-24T09:25:11","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T16:25:11","slug":"fumbling-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/05\/fumbling-the-future.html","title":{"rendered":"Fumbling the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/638812.Fumbling_the_Future\" style=\"float: right; padding-left: 20px\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer\" src=\"https:\/\/i.gr-assets.com\/images\/S\/compressed.photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1347766702l\/638812.jpg\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/638812.Fumbling_the_Future\">Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/99343.Douglas_K_Smith\">Douglas K. Smith<\/a><br\/>\nMy rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/4717502739\">3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nowadays, just about every businessperson has heard the cautionary tale of Xerox. In the 1970s, Xerox\u2019s Palo Alto Research Center (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PARC_(company)\">PARC<\/a>) invented the modern office. Computing firsts at PARC included the personal computer, the graphical user interface with the desktop paradigm and \u201cwhat you see is what you get\u201d (WYSIWYG) word processing, the laser printer, local area networking (Ethernet) and object-oriented programming. Yet, by the 1980s Xerox had failed to successfully bring most of these inventions to market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PARC\u2019s vision of the future was so complete that in a 1995 interview Steve Jobs said of <a href=\"https:\/\/web.stanford.edu\/dept\/SUL\/sites\/mac\/parc.html\">his legendary visit<\/a>, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bhooshan.com\/2017\/12\/07\/quotes-steve-jobs-lost-interview\/\">they showed me really three things, but I was so blinded by the first \u2026 which was the graphical user interface<\/a>\u201d that he didn\u2019t even recognize the importance of everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But how exactly did Xerox become the company to so toughly invent the office of the future only to lose sight of that vision and watch other companies; Apple and Microsoft to name just two, deliver it instead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s the story of <em>Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored the First Personal Computer<\/em>. Based on initial research done by co-author Robert C. Alexander, the book is a business management examination of Xerox that includes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>How the Haloid Company (Xerox) became the first to market xerography, which along with a robust sales &amp; pricing strategy made Xerox very profitable<\/li><li>That Xerox leadership recognized the correct business strategy to diversify beyond xerography<\/li><li>That the culture and executive leadership focus on a transformative diversification strategy was lacking, resulting in several key errors:<ul><li>Mismanagement of Scientific Data Systems (SDS), Xerox\u2019s initial computer acquisition<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Early success in xerography resulted in \u2018can\u2019t lose\u2019 &amp; \u2018not invented here\u2019 attitudes among different Xerox divisions<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>The void of a united corporate culture resulted in a mismatch of cultures between Xerox senior leadership, PARC and other divisions, such as SDS<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Misreading of market trends and onerous product development processes for digital and xerography product lines resulted in expensive product miscues<\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>While the book places the technical innovations in context, it is not a dive deep into the strengths and weaknesses of the technical work done by the Xerox PARC team. In other words, the assumption that is central to this book (and to the tale at large, that Xerox management blundered so toughly) is that Xerox\u2019s initial implementation of this new technology could stand on its own in the marketplace. This conceit assumes that Apple, Microsoft and others simply xeroxed PARC\u2019s work wholesale. However, the failure of Apple\u2019s Lisa in 1983<sup><a href=\"#sub1\">1<\/a><\/sup> and later success with the Macintosh along with Microsoft\u2019s lack of traction with Windows until <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Windows_3.1x#Reception\">Windows v3.1<\/a> in 1992 suggests that additional development, refinement and market evolution was still necessary for Xerox\u2019s office of the future to finally take hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"sub1\">1<\/a> On the other hand, the influx of Xerox ideas and personnel to Apple, the failure of the Lisa and the death knell of Apple post Steve Jobs\u2019 ousting in 1985 suggests perhaps Apple copied too much of Xerox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer by Douglas K. Smith My rating: 3 of 5 stars Nowadays, just about every businessperson has heard the cautionary tale of Xerox. In the 1970s, Xerox\u2019s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) invented the modern office. Computing firsts at PARC included the personal computer, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1415,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions\/1415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}