In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters [Hardcover]

This book really brought back some memories for me: visions of my old Commodore 64, for example, as well as Coleco's Adam (a system I absolutely lusted after as a kid); it also introduced me to products and services I do not remember. It's amazing to look back now and see just how differently things could have gone in the high-tech business had stupidity not taken down many an important player in the game. At one time, three companies led the way: Microsoft (with its DOS operating system), Lotus (with its spreadsheets), and Ashton-Tate (with its databases) - oh, how things have changed. Merrill R. Chapman was certainly well-placed to chronicle this list of marketing disasters; he worked for some of the companies that collapsed (a voice of common sense crying unheeded in the wilderness), owned an astounding number of early computer systems, and stood there taking the pulse of his peers at many a computer show.

Chapman looks at a number of companies here. He shows how IBM blew its chance to really steer the whole future of high-tech by depending solely on its fabled aura of invincibility (as opposed to, say, marketing or making smart decisions) - an aura which was stripped away forever by the introduction of the disappointing OS/2 operating system (which, for example, would not print to anything but IBM printers when it was finally released, well past schedule).

Then there's MicroPro, an early leader in the word processing market who (seeing that an upgrade to its successful WordStar line would never make its deadline) stupidly introduced WordStar 2000 alongside it- the fact that these were two separate products with no direct relationship to one another thoroughly confused consumers and forced the company to spend all its time trying to distinguish the two products in the public's mind. That's nothing compared to Ashton-Tate, however, which at one time marketed some five database programs at the same time. (These were the guys behind dBase, which saw itself supplanted by competitors after Ed Esber, perhaps the worst CEO in history, went out of his way to alienate everyone in the dBase community). Oftentimes, these sorts of positioning problems were an after-effect of ill-thought mergers. Not only did this sort of thing confuse consumers, it also created bitter factions within the companies themselves. Ed Esber, by the way, was not the only top dog who couldn't hold his tongue. Netscape's Mark Andreesson did his company no favors with his own seeming inability to stop running his mouth (thereby increasing Bill Gates' determination to crush Netscape like a bug); sacrificing a couple of years to needlessly rewrite the entire code of the Netscape browser in 2000 did the company no favors either, allowing Microsoft to dominate the browser market.

Even the successful companies dabbled with stupidity. Even as Intel's Dancing Bunnies cavorted across television screens declaring just how essential the new Pentium chip was, consumers discovered that the glorious new chip could not count, thanks to a fault in its math coprocessor. Microsoft fostered confusion by its "two thoroughbred" ads pushing Windows NT and Windows 95 simultaneously (seemingly unaware of the fact that a horse race can have only one winner), and Gates' maniacal assault on Netscape courted legal trouble from the Department of Justice (as did his vow to continue business as usual after securing a relatively favorable settlement in the company's first legal go-round). Apple, which was seemingly well-placed to dominate the market early on, found out the hard way that labeling potential customers "lemmings" (in a fateful Super Bowl ad) does not exactly win over the hearts and minds of the target audience.

Stupidly named products, attempts to sell a brand rather than the product or service itself (remember [...]sock puppet, who is now peddling auto loans), dependence on tradition and "invincibility" instead of sound marketing, evidence of hostility toward developers and the software community in general - all of these stupid mistakes and more are chronicled here in these pages. Here you will rediscover dinosaurs of the early high-tech industry currently residing in multiple landfills across the southwestern United States, and I can assure you that your mind will be blown by some of the suicidal decisions now-defunct companies made. Chapman is an engaging writer, making In Search of Stupidity as entertaining as it is instructive.

This book basically deals with the stupidity found in high tech companies of the 1980's and 1990's. Why is Microsoft such a huge company today? It isn't because their products were better or because they cheated other companies out of their rightful place in the market. It's because they weren't as stupid as their competition. Merrill Chapman takes us through the comedy of errors that companies like Digital Research, WordStar, Lotus, and Ashton-Tate went through as they tossed their market leads aside in fits of stupidity. You can't help but laugh (or cry) at the amazing levels of stupidity that these companies exhibited. Examples: WordStar was once one of the finest word processing programs in the world. But somehow the company ended up owning two competing mediocre products. Lotus was the leader in spreadsheets but ignored the rise of Windows and allowed themselves to be knocked out of first place by Excel. These and many more examples are well documented in this book.

The book is not an in-depth study of the business world. You won't find very much analysis of why a particular company made such obviously fatal errors. Why did Borland pay an outrageous sum to buy Ashton-Tate at a time when Ashton-Tate had virtually nothing that Borland needed? You won't find the answer here. What you will find is an amusing, well-written (without being vicious) examination of the collapse of perfectly good companies under the weight of their own serious errors of judgment.

There is a moral to be learned from this book. It isn't necessary to be excellent. In fact, excellence can be expensive and drive up your costs so much that they make your products uncompetitive. The secret is not to be excellent, in fact you don't even have to be very smart. All you need to be is less stupid that your competitors. Just ask Microsoft.

Why would anyone want to read about all of the stupid things that companies have done since the early 1980s to lose money, destroy customer relationships, go bankrupt and annoy everyone? Well, it should be because almost everyone makes a fatal error in a high tech company. Only Microsoft among the software companies has avoided that folly. Among PC companies, only Dell seems immune to date. Intel flirted with a fatal error when it tried to ignore its Pentium floating point problem. $500 million later, it was wiser.

Another good reason for reading about them is that Mr. Chapman is a very funny writer. He makes the stories very entertaining. He also was present at some of the most inauspicious moments which gives the stories an extra verve that's irresistible.

I especially enjoyed the afterword which explained in detail why it's always a stupid idea to rewrite working code from scratch to create the next release.

I agree with the conclusion that tech companies need to be headed by people who understand the technical issues and the business challenges so they can make informed decisions about what to do next. I also suggest that investors read this book to get early warning signs of high tech meltdowns.

Many people will be annoyed by this book because it suggests that Microsoft deserves its place in the software industry in part due to having avoided major errors and providing top-rated products. Naturally, there are still many stories of Microsoft's bullying tactics. So you'll still have a chance to be annoyed with Microsoft part of the time as you read the book.

Mr. Chapman has such a talent for this work that I hope he will choose to apply it to politicians next. That could be really funny!