THE LIMITS OF STRATEGY-SECOND EDITION

A new edition of a book chronicling the early years of computers.

Centering on the period from the 1970s to 2000, Simson charts the rise of the computer industry and the men and women who helped transform it. As Simson puts it, he had a ringside seat for the period, running, along with his wife, the “quietly powerful” think tank Research Board, which “observed and occasionally guided the computer industry.” From this vantage point, he met many of the crucial figures of the period, including Bill Gates (who “intuited that the future belonged to volume”) and Steve Jobs (who expanded the personal computer market “from thousands of enthusiasts to millions of homes”) and learned some essential lessons. One important lesson was that “vision is a perishable currency until executed,” and another, equally central, dealt with “how disruptive technology can work to destroy even those who understand it well.” Simson looks at a variety of powerhouse companies, like Hewlett-Packard, Wang Labs, Digital Equipment, and IBM, and he profiles some of the company leaders who had to deal with upheavals in IT, showing their insights and mistakes. Ken Olsen, for instance, the head of Digital Equipment and the man who famously said, “There is no need for a computer in the home” (“the remark,” Simson notes, “that draws squeals of disbelief to this day”), is characterized as “a brilliant strategist who lost his touch” as his company failed to adapt to industry changes. Simson is a knowledgeable, insightful guide, and although his insights are often densely wonkish (“product-group allocations of scarce technical resources were entirely self-serving and without regard for the revenue potential of a company’s account as a whole,” and so on), he astutely notes the root cause of corporate failure in the face of seismic changes: the tendency of upper management to stubbornly stick around instead of leaving or changing.

An invaluable insider’s guide both to the IT explosion and to surviving massive tech advances.