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In Search of Stupidity
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Nov 22, 2006 03:06 PM
from the you-don't-have-to-look-far dept.
from the you-don't-have-to-look-far dept.
Ben Rothke writes "In
Search of Stupidity gets
its title from the classic, albeit infamous business book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from
America's Best-Run Companies, by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. In Search of Excellence quickly became a
best-seller when it came out in 1988 and launched a new era of management consultants and business books. But in 2001, Peters admitted that he
falsified the underlying data. Librarians have been slow to move the book to the fiction section." Read the rest of Ben's review.
In Search of Stupidity is not a traditional business book; rather, it's a high-level analysis of marketing mistakes made by some of the biggest and most well-known high-tech companies over the last 20 years. The book contains numerous stories of somewhat smart companies that have made stupid marketing mistakes. The catastrophe is that these mistakes have led to the demise of many of these companies.
For those who have been in technology for a while, the book will be a somewhat nostalgic look at what has happened over the years from the world of high-tech marketing. Combined with Chapman's often hilarious observations, the book is a most enjoyable and fascinating read and is hard to put down once you start.
The first chapters of the book discuss the story and mythology around the origins of DOS. It details such luminaries as Digital Research, IBM, Microsoft, Bill Gates and Gary Kildall and more. The first myth about Microsoft is the presumption that the original contract with IBM for MS-DOS gave Microsoft an immediate and unfair advantage over its competitors. The reality is that over time, MS-DOS did indeed become Microsoft's cash cow; but it took the idiocy of Apple, IBM and others to make this happen.
The book also notes that throughout its history, Microsoft would consistently make the most of its competitor's mistakes and stupidity to its advantage. The book repeatedly notes that yes, Microsoft has not always been ethical or nice; but the reality is that such behavior has also been practiced by many in the software industry. Not that it rationalizes what Microsoft has done, and to a degree still does. But it is unfair to pinpoint Microsoft as the sole miscreant in the dirty software waters.
For the better part of the last decade, Microsoft has owned the desktop. But that was not always the case. In the early 1990's IBM was frantically working on its nascent OS/2 operating system, working alongside Microsoft as a trusted partner. IBM had the cash and talent to ensure that OS/2 would own the desktop. So why did OS/2 miserably fail? It was primarily IBM's own ineptitude in marketing OS/2 which led to Windows 95 taking over the desktop. The desktop was IBM's to lose and that is precisely what it did.
Microsoft at one point was working with IBM to develop OS/2 and many have written that Microsoft took advantage of IBM in that joint effort. But Chapman writes that complete and direct responsibility for the failure of OS/2 falls completely on IBM. He notes that it is difficult to find a marketing mistake around OS/2 that IBM did not make. At the time, the market was ready to accept almost any GUI and it was Microsoft that gave the people what they wanted. It was not so much that Microsoft beat IBM; rather that IBM imploded with OS/2 and Microsoft was there to pick up the pieces.
As to ownership of the desktop, Chapman notes that even with Microsoft's near endless budget, bullying tactics, and use of the FUD factor, those alone did not enable Microsoft to monopolize the desktop operating system market. Chapman notes that the following key factors, all which are unrelated and out of Microsoft's control had to take place in order for that to happen.
First, Xerox, the original inventor of the GUI had to never develop a clue about how to commercialize the groundbreaking product that came out of its own labs. Digital Research then had to blow off IBM when it came calling to them for an operating systems for the original IBM PC. IBM would then have to fall victim to Microsoft during its joint development of OS/2.
Finally, Apple would have to decide not to license the Macintosh operating system. That decision led Apple to have a 30% share of the desktop market in the early 1990's to its current irrelevant 4% share.
Chapman lists numerous secondary factors that also contributed to Microsoft's dominance. While the accepted wisdom is that Microsoft single-handedly cornered the desktop operating system market; the reality is that the ultimate success of Microsoft is as much a result of their near endless good luck combined with the recurring stupidity of its competition.
The stupidity of IBM and Apple gave the desktop market to Microsoft. Similarly, Novell gave the NOS market to them. In the mid-1990's, Novell owned the NOS market. Netware along with myriad CNE's (Certified Network Engineerswere the dominant force in network computing. When Windows NT version 3.1 shipped (it was really version 1.0), it was clearly inferior to Netware, as myriad product reviews stated.
Yet a few years later, Windows NT was the dominant NOS and Novell was struggling. While Netware was clearly superior to NT from a functionality perspective, the genius of Microsoft was that it knew better how to deal and communicate with its development community. Today, Netware is an irrelevant NOS and Novell has effectively abandoned it to primarily focus on its Linux strategy.
Exactly at the same time Microsoft was pushing Windows NT and wooing developers, Novell shutdown its third-party development center in Austin, TX. Novell also became preoccupied with its misguided purchase of WordPerfect. Novell developers were left hanging until Microsoft came calling with its promises of NT development and marketing support. Similarly, it was Novell failures that directly lead to the success of Windows NT.
Novell had myriad chances to decimate Windows, but it never stepped up to the plate. Novell's inexperienced marketing department thought that "if you built a great NOS, they would come." But come they did not, and leave Netware they did.
It is chapter 10 that will likely give Slashdot readers a fit. The author attempts to set straight additional myths around Microsoft: that their products are of poor quality, that they have only succeeded because of its market monopolies, that they are not innovative, and more. For those who want all of the details, they should read the book. But the authors notes for example that while Microsoft has been widely criticized for not being an innovative company, it is no different from companies such as Lotus, Borland, Xerox and more.
Most recently, when Microsoft found itself behind the 8-ball and lacking a browser, Internet Explorer was quickly developer and in time, surpassed the capability of Netscape Navigator. By 1998, most reviews were giving IE a higher rating than Navigator. Of course, Microsoft has more cash and developers than Netscape, but that alone was not what doomed them. Simultaneously, Netscape derailed itself in an attempt to completely rewrite Navigator in Java. This led them to the state where they would permanently fall behind Microsoft in the development race.
The book contains 12 chapters each with a different set of stupid marketing actions. Rather than simply being a Monday morning quarterback, chapter 14 contains an analysis of each scenario and what the respective companies should have done.
In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters is a most valuable book and is a wonderful read for anyone in the software industry. For those in sales and marketing, it is clearly required reading, and in fact, should be reread periodically. While In Search of Excellence turned out to be a fraud, In Search of Stupidity is genuine, and no names have been changed to protect the guilty.
You can purchase In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Executive Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Executive Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Re:Executive Summary (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked on games published for Microsoft ("Close Combat") and the level of effort that Microsoft put into the polishing and marketing of that game was astounding... especially when compared to work that the prior publishers of the V for Victory series had done.
Microsoft is underhanded at times and their products are technically inferior to other solutions. But the reason that Microsoft is successful is because they understand their customers very, very well. I am not their customer... my parents are. The unwashed masses of
The point of this book is that other companies did not do this and that is why they failed. It may be 20/20 hindsight but the message is a core fundamental of even basic business classes and the failures documented in this book just prove that the lessons were not always learned.
(And I'm tied to the book in anyway and haven't worked for Microsoft in any manner for a loong time.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I understood the review as saying that this is quite true, but it doesn't much matter because the other companies are also underhanded and have inferior products. They just aren't as good at underhanded marketing of inferior products as Microsoft is.
Did I read the review wrong?
(And lin
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it.
The entire book is on Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
This barely qualifies as a review.
Yes, Re:The entire book is about Microsoft? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, if the summary is accurate, the whole book is some kind of, "M$ is the geniuz, and everyone else is the stupid," apology. Every one of those stories is easily dissmissed by use of memory, or reading old articles and the Microsoft Anti-Trust Trials. The destrution of Microsoft's former partners and competitors is mostly a matter of licensing and vendor deals that locked everyone else out. They have paid for those deals again and again and had judgment after judgement thrown at them. Their stratagy of destroying "loss leaders" instead of inventing things is something they brag about to shareholders.
The inside cover of this book should be a mirror. That way, anyone who's bought this book in a "search for stupidity" will find it when they open it. The publishers and Microsoft will agree.
Parent
It shouldn't be just a chapter... (Score:3, Informative)
catastrophe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe this is a fine point, but I can think of a lot of catastrophes in the last 20 years and none of them has to do with the demise of any company. I know it may be traumatic for those involved but catastrophe seems a bit strong. And from what I gather from the review, most of the companies mentioned still exist, though they are possibly not as dominant as they once were.
If the review is accurate, the book is revisionist (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft already had almost complete control over the desktop before Windows 95 was released. Some of this was due to IBM's mistakes with OS/2. Some of this was due to Microsoft's predatory licensing practices. But the single largest reason has nothing to do with either of these factors. IBM's competitors didn't want to subsidize IBM's hardware division by preloading software from it's software division. I remember an interview with the CEO of Compaq. When asked about the possibility of preloading OS/2, he laughed and said something like, ``yeah, right, I'm going to preload the software of a direct competitor on my machines.''
IBM's biggest blunders with OS/2 didn't come until after Windows 95. The ``OS/2 obliterates my software'' campaign was certainly a disaster. So was the gamble that IBM's PSP division made on blowing almost the entire OS/2 v.4 budget on a the stillborn port of OS/2 to the PowerPC chip. But as large as these mistakes were, they were made too late in the game to affect the outcome.
Re:If the review is accurate, the book is revision (Score:5, Interesting)
That wasn't a blunder by IBM. That was a deliberate marketing decision by Microsoft. Windows 95 was released about six months ahead of schedule. One month it was going to be due in summer, the next month it was to be on store shelves by Christmas.
The way that I see it:
Microsoft blindsided IBM and doomed the computer industry with Windows 95. Microsoft and IBM were in a race for years to see who would own the desktop. Microsoft deduced, correctly, that whatever OS people picked up next, no matter what it was or who it came from, would become the default OS simply because people, after paying $100 for one, weren't going to shell out another $100 even if the first was completely broken. Windows 95, known in beta as Chicago, was falling progressively further and further behind schedule and it looked like IBM and OS/2 were going to sweep the field.
So what did MS do? They took a horrific beta edition, Chicago, slapped enough duct tape and bubblegum on it so that it would work, with massive amounts of coaxing, on just over half of the high volume production systems being shipped, and put it on the store shelves about six months before it had been scheduled to be released. They didn't make a better product but they did get the first product onto the shelves. Coupling it with a monstrosity of an EULA and the budding resistance from stores to refund money for unuseable (but opened) software Microsoft managed to turn the entire American population into a free army of beta testers and socially engineered them to accept sub-par software as a norm. The majority of American consumers didn't know any better, knew nothing about the acceptable levels of software quality, and when Win95 broke repeatedly they, lemminglike, kept calling customer support centers until someone would promise to ship them a floppy or a CD with the necessary patches for their hardware.
How did IBM lose? They stuck to schedule and attempted to uphold their standards of software functionality before releasing it onto the public.
What did the computer industry gain? A
Thank you Microsoft for bringing all of the stray cats and dogs from the whole neighborhood to play/poop/pee in the carefully planned sandbox that we had.
Parent
Chicago was vaporware for years, true (Score:4, Insightful)
And the reason for this is simple: preloads. Consumers very rarely upgrade their operating system. Instead they prefer to run the system that their computer came with. This holds true to today where Microsoft's largest competitor for Vista is itself because no one wants to upgrade without a compelling reason. And IBM couldn't get any of its competitors (Compaq, HP, NEC, DEC, Packard-Bell, etc.) to preload OS/2 for a very simple reason, none of them wanted to be beholden to one of their largest rivals for an operating system.
Parent
IBM thought they bought the market (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember back then when IBM trotted their dog'n'pony show through our conference rooms trying to convince us that since Presentation Manager was 32-bit and the Microsoft stuff was a half-assed combination of 16-bit thunks running inside 32-bit windowing that the only intelligent decision was to pick OS/2 for our new development.
Back at this time, IBM still proudly wore the crown of the Kings of FUD, and we techies didn't respect them for it. Anyone with an IQ of 80+ could see that new development would be only on 32-bit systems anyway, and the whole thunking argument was just bullshit for salesmen to shovel to ignorant VPs.
IBM fervently believed that if they could sell OS/2 4.0 to Corporate America (TM) then OS/2 was the winner. Most people reading this won't appreciate just how much they believed this, but that was the truth. IBM was exactly like a rich poker player who bets his entire bankroll on one good hand and figures he has bought the pot. They had true TCP/IP networking (not that shitty Trumpet Winsock.) They had true multitasking, (not the idle-time-sharing kludge that was Windows 3.1.) They had their WoW layer (the original precursor to WINE) that would run Windows 3.1 apps right inside OS/2 (although back then virtually every useful Windows app violated the Windows API for performance or hardware reasons.) And they had performed huge amounts of quality control testing. OS/2 4.0 was, for its day, a solid operating system. It absolutely kicked ass over Windows 3.1, and was far superior to Windows 95. They had every technical reason to believe they had a superior product.
Finally for the "cool rollout factor" to appeal to geeks everywhere, they had Leonard Nimoy as their pitchman. What geek wouldn't automatically trust Spock to make the logical choice of operating systems?
But to IBM, home computers were almost irrelevant. Microsoft, on the other hand, aggressively made sure that Windows 3.1 (and 3.11 and WfW) came preinstalled on every computer sold. And while they wanted to get into big corporations, they realized they were making their money one sale at a time, and one small workgroup at a time. By sliding in the back door, they became dominant before IBM sold a single copy of Warp. People running WfW migrated to NT 3.1, and then to NT 3.5. People running Windows 3.1 believed Microsoft, upgraded to Windows 95, and then bought new computers that could actually handle the added CPU and disk loads. And with Windows 95's native reliance on DOS, most of those broken Windows 3.1 apps were able to continue to function (unlike WoW on OS/2.)
IBM was shattered. Our account reps walked around looking like dogs that had been beaten for crapping on the carpet. They seriously and honestly thought that their better product and their sales to every Fortune 100 company was how you played hardball and won these games. After all, that's how they ruthlessly and utterly dominated the mainframe market for over a generation. But in the end, it turned out to be a popularity contest, and they had actually been beaten before they knew the game was on.
Parent
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When I was involved with OS/2 and its development, AIX, and Unix in general were considered outdated and flawed, esp. with regards to scheduling and priority management. Considering how systems like OS/2 and BeOS perform under heavy load, and seeing how esp. the schedulers of modern Unix systems look little like what was the
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OS/2 died when Windows 3.0 started getting bundled with new computers. Whatever happened after that was completely irrelevant, and everybody that was involved with computers back then knew it!
I agree that between the releases of Windows 3.1x and Windows 95, IBM tried a number of desperate marketing campaigns to regain some of their lost mindshare. I don't think they even dared to hope to become "the next windows" anymore, but maybe at least a sizeable alternative. But it was all futile. It didn't matter h
Re:If the review is accurate, the book is revision (Score:2)
I'd agree - I was around developing software at the time of OS/2 Warp, Win95 etc, and my general impression was that Windows 3.1x ownz0red the desktop. With OS/2, I always felt that IBM had to come up with a really good reason why you'd want to run it instead of Windows...and they never did (to be fair, I was running NT 3.1/3.5 around that time, so it was harder to convince me). It always seemed like a 'different' GUI rather than a better one. And the 'it runs all your Windows apps' adverts just made me
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried like heck to get us to use OS/2 desktop systems at a place I worked in 1993. I gave up when I tried to connect our IBM brand (PS/ValuePoint!) PCs, running IBM's OS/2, to an IBM midrange computer, using an IBM 5250 emulation card, only to be told by IBM technical support that the 5250 software written by IBM only supported Microsoft Windows. At this point, I knew OS/2 was doomed as a desktop OS. When you can't even convince another division of your own company to interoperate with your product, you
The FIRST anti-trust trial. (Score:3, Informative)
So it would seem that Microsoft already owned the desktop market prior to 1995.
http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/0,1551,35212,
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However, this has nothing to do with the software business. The point is, and this is made by other commenta
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And here is a hint of the true source of Micr
Search? (Score:2)
You can stop looking (Score:2)
I am right here, you don't have to keep on looking. Sorry if finding me delayed anythign important. I will still be here latter if now is not a good time.
In terms of marketing blunder's... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
There's nothing like the sensation of shooting yourself in the foot.
Other chapters? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Still, its a good and entertaining read. You also get to pull out some truisms that really can help your day to day life if your in product management, engineering management or deal with marketing folks on a regular basis. I find myself regularly applying some of the lessons I took out of it.
Quick read, you can eat it in a few hou
Table of Contents and sample chapter (Score:3, Informative)
Apple never had a 30% share (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like a pretty accurate book to me.... (Score:5, Interesting)
OS/2 had a fanatical base of users who really wanted to see it take over. Quite a few open source utilities and apps were ported over, in attempts to bolster its "credibility" as a powerful OS. Entire magazines were published just for it. It had IRC channels devoted to it. And I remember the excitement OS/2 users had every time a commercial app would finally get native 32-bit support for it. But IBM did such boneheaded maneuvers as selling a whole line of PCs that came preloaded with *Windows* and weren't even certified as compatible with OS/2. They barely even tried to sell their last version of Warp, v4.0 "Merlin" - despite it having numerous innovative features that could have easily been marketed to the public as good reasons to buy it. (The integration of IBM's voice recognition and dictation system with the OS was years ahead of the competition, for example.)
The OS/2 community tried to keep on supporting the OS long after IBM gave up on it, in fact. But eventually, it just became pointless to try to run a "dead" OS with no driver support for any new peripherals, etc.
I will say though, in defense of Apple, they doggedly stuck to their original business model - which was really the model *every* brand of computer was sold with, before MS-DOS and "IBM compatible" became the "industry standard". If they caved in and started selling PC clones, or licensed out MacOS back then, where would they be today? You can say their unwillingness to change forced them down to 5% sales vs. 30% or more
As another OS/2 supporter from "back in the day" (Score:2)
Eventually, I had to realize that, if the developers of OS/2 won't support it, there is not point to me doing so. I un-installed it, put Windows back on, boxed up what I had of OS/2 Warp, and threw the whole shebang in the nearest dumpster.
They really had something there.
And also... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like a pretty accurate book to me.... (Score:4, Interesting)
And IBM still didn't listen.
sPh
Parent
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The irony here is that the last version of Warp was "Aurora", the should-have-been-v5.0 version that was finally released, in a blaze of no publicity at all, as "OS/2 Warp Server for e-Business". They tried so hard not to sell it that you haven't even heard of it - the policy was to tell nobody but the large ent
Yup... (Score:3, Insightful)
AFAIK the only machine you could ever get
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I was one of the hundreds of OS/2 developers at IBM. I can tell you this, at the top of every source module for OS/2, there was this statement "Copyright 1987, Microsoft Corporation."
Yes, MS wrote OS/2 - except for the networking layer and the installation programs - the worst parts of OS/2. When I mentioned that the worst parts of OS/2 were written by IBM
Platform/Technology limited competitor options (Score:2, Informative)
Apple and others did a lot of stupid things to give Microsoft the desktop. Few would claim the Windows 3.1, the first popular version, was even half as good as Mac OS at the time. However, Microsoft got Windows 3.1 to work on the VGA graphics "IBM Compatible" computers that people already owned. Furthermore, Windows 3.1 could run almost all of the DOS software that people already had.
The Mac OS GUI features requi
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Stupidity found! (Score:2)
1982 (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_Of_Excelle
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Questionable points (Score:5, Insightful)
In reading the review, I was struck by several points.
Microsoft did have a big advantage when the first IBM PCs were shipped: MS-DOS, under the name of PC-DOS, was shipped by default. You could get (IIRC) CP/M-86 or the UCSD p-system, but most people had no reason to do so. I would think that Microsoft did have a big advantage with the first contract, contrary to what the reviewer says.
Nor is the account of how Microsoft won the desktop at all correct. By the time there was a Windows 95, Microsoft had already won. Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups were standard, and the question at the companies I knew was whether to upgrade to 95 or NT. IBM's OS/2 was not so much a competitor as a challenger. The real story is back when Windows first came out, and was competing with several other desktops for the IBM PC and clones. They were all crappy products then, including Windows, but Windows came out on top. Why? The reviewer does not suggest that the book has much to say about this.
The view of Apple seems odd, to say the least. I don't think the Macintosh ever had near 30% of the marketshare. If we're talking about the Apple II, that went the way of the other major systems when the IBM PC came out, and there was nothing Apple could do about it. Anything that wasn't strictly compatible with the IBM PC was a fringe market at best. Radio Shack's Tandy 2000 was a superior product, with its own versions of the major software of the time, and it tanked. The major problem Apple had was not that it didn't license its software, but that its software was not IBM-compatible. Licensing the Macintosh OS might have helped, or it might have hurt, but it couldn't have given Apple a 30% market share. This gives me the feeling that the author doesn't understand the issues, and just makes assumptions as to what would work.
In short, this is not a convincing review. It suggests that the book is inaccurate, glosses over important issues, and makes unwarranted assumptions when convenient.
Microsoft "innovation" (Score:4, Insightful)
In search of stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Digital Research DID provide an OS to IBM (Score:3, Insightful)
1. DOS had an amazing (for the time) street price of $49 and was out first.
2. CP/M came later had a street price around $225
3. Game over.
Did Gates not devlop, but rather buy, DOS from Seattle Computer Products and push it out? Yes.
Did Gates know OEM's business model from selling BASIC to several and price DOS for that? Yes.
chilling effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple not licensing is not a Marketing mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Licensing, I agree, would be a great boon for consumers, but there is no evidence than it would have been good for Apple. It was a conscious decision not to do it because licensing would undermine their hardware sales, which was of course later proven when they actually did license the OS!! Yes they lost market share, but they retained revenues they couldn't get any way else at the time. Therefore calling it a mistake is a typical fallacy that far too many techies and tech business types make because they fail to look at apple's real business model.
This book seems to be a skimming of information from moderated slashdot comments. This might be a good book for someone new to the idea, but there doesn't seem to be anything good here. Plenty of company bashing we've all done before, and nothing new to add. Nothing to see here... move along.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. Anyone who deliberately has their photograph taken using the kirlian method in an attempt to see their aura qualifies. As such, 99% of kirlian pictures of humans reveal just this very thing.
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