DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC - The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation: Amazon.co.uk: Schein: Books

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Product Description

"DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC" tells the 40-year story of the creation and demise of one of the pioneering companies of the computer age, and explains in detail how a particular culture can become so embedded that the organization is unable to adapt to changing circumstances even though it sees the need very clearly. It shows how the evolution of technology, organization and culture intertwine into a complex system that may leave the organization unable to cope. It shows clearly the price of success and growth and the potential problems that organizational maturity creates. Edgar Schein is one of the last giants left of the original founders of the Organization Development field - he is also a widely respected scholar and a bestselling author. This title shows how the unique culture of DEC was responsible both for its early rise and for its ultimate downfall - a real-life classical tragedy.

About the Author

Edgar H. Schein is currently Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at the Sloan School. He is also the Founding Editor of Reflections, the Journal of the Society for Organizational Learning devoted to connecting academics, consultants, and practitioners around the issues of knowledge creation, dissemination and utilization.

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"The story of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) is fundamentally a forty-year saga encompassing the creation of a new technology, the building of a company that became the number two computer company in the United States with $14 billion in sales at its p" Read the first page

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Helpful Assemblage of Facts about DEC as a Case History, 27 April 2004

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Professor Schein has written a helpful case history of Digital EquipmentCorporation as a computer industry innovator from the perspective of itsorganizational culture. He draws successfully on his own directobservations during decades of consulting work, and involves others fortheir experiences as well in describing the organizational culture. Themost helpful parts are in the form of notes and comments that occurredduring the rise and fall of DEC. His main weakness as an observer is thathe lumps too much of what was missing from DEC under his continuingreferences to the "business gene." The case history, as a result, is toolight on other aspects of DEC.
Anyone who is interested in Professor Clayton Christensen's work onsustaining innovation will find deeper insights into why culturesencourage innovation failure by emphasizing one way of working onissues.
If you just want to understand the lessons of why DEC was ultimatelyunsuccessful as an enterprise, you only need to read Gordon Bell'spostscript in appendix e. Like every other computer company at the time,DEC and its leaders did not have an actionable understanding of theimplications of the ongoing productivity advances in semiconductors andhow nonengineers liked to interact with computers. Our firm did consultingfor another computer maker in 1978 to look at how to outperform DEC, andthe vulnerability to semiconductor trends was clear then . . . even beforethe personal computer became important.
The book fails to explain why DEC was so insulated from profit disciplinesthat drive so many other companies. During its heyday, DEC and its fellowcomputer makers enjoyed exceptionally high rates of repeat sales (wellover 90%) to the same customers. The reason: Software written for onecompany's machine often wouldn't work on another company's machine. Socustomers were stuck. It cost too much and took too much time to rewriteall that code. So you would stay with a vendor who was no longer competentfor quite a long time. The challenge in the closed systems world was tosell the first machine to a customer, and make it work. In the opensystems environment, you have to compete for repeat sales. For DEC, thatwas like AT&T having to compete with other long-distance carriers afterhaving had a monopoly for all of those years. Ultimate failure should nothave been surprising.
Rather than learning more about DEC, I would suggest that you focus onstudying current computing industry technology leaders who have beenconsistently able to adjust their business models such as Dell, BusinessObjects, Cisco, QLogic and EMC. They have processes in place that DECnever had, and it's hard to learn to succeed by looking at a company thatlacked such a key process. Clearly, the lesson of DEC is that working onorganizational development in a technology company without creating anability to perform continuing business model innovation is a waste oftime.
As I finished the book, I realized that those who are hoping that boardswill use better governance to ensure that high technology companiesprosper are being way too optimistic. Few boards can hope to know enoughto even understand whether or not the company is working on the rightquestions.

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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Helpful Assemblage of Facts about DEC for a Case History, 2 Jun 2004

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Professor Schein has written a helpful case history of Digital Equipment Corporation as a computer industry innovator from the perspective of its organizational culture. He draws successfully on his own direct observations during decades of consulting work, and involves others for their experiences as well in describing the organizational culture. The most helpful parts are in the form of notes and comments that occurred during the rise and fall of DEC. His main weakness as an observer is that he lumps too much of what was missing from DEC under his continuing references to the "business gene." The case history, as a result, is too light on other aspects of DEC.

Anyone who is interested in Professor Clayton Christensen's work on sustaining innovation will find deeper insights into why cultures encourage innovation failure by emphasizing one way of working on issues.

If you just want to understand the lessons of why DEC was ultimately unsuccessful as an enterprise, you only need to read Gordon Bell's postscript in appendix e. Like every other computer company at the time, DEC and its leaders did not have an actionable understanding of the implications of the ongoing productivity advances in semiconductors and how nonengineers liked to interact with computers. Our firm did consulting for another computer maker in 1978 to look at how to outperform DEC, and the vulnerability to semiconductor trends was clear then . . . even before the personal computer became important.

The book fails to explain why DEC was so insulated from profit disciplines that drive so many other companies. During its heyday, DEC and its fellow computer makers enjoyed exceptionally high rates of repeat sales (well over 90%) to the same customers. The reason: Software written for one company's machine often wouldn't work on another company's machine. So customers were stuck. It cost too much and took too much time to rewrite all that code. So you would stay with a vendor who was no longer competent for quite a long time. The challenge in the closed systems world was to sell the first machine to a customer, and make it work. In the open systems environment, you have to compete for repeat sales. For DEC, that was like AT&T having to compete with other long-distance carriers after having had a monopoly for all of those years. Ultimate failure should not have been surprising.

Rather than learning more about DEC, I would suggest that you focus on studying current computing industry technology leaders who have been consistently able to adjust their business models such as Dell, Business Objects, Cisco, QLogic and EMC. They have processes in place that DEC never had, and it's hard to learn to succeed by looking at a company that lacked such a key process. Clearly, the lesson of DEC is that working on organizational development in a technology company without creating an ability to perform continuing business model innovation is a waste of time.

As I finished the book, I realized that those who are hoping that boards will use better governance to ensure that high technology companies prosper are being way too optimistic. Few boards can hope to know enough to even understand whether or not the company is working on the right questions.

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3.0 out of 5 stars There are better books on innovation and why companies fail..., 2 Jan 2009

By	Mr. R. Willis (England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC - The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation (Paperback)

I found this book deeply disappointing. The author spent 30 years consulting for Ken Olsen and top DEC staff but seems to have been ineffective in helping DEC avoid its implosion.

The focus in this book is on the DEC culture and its good and bad aspects; there are far too few facts relating to the history of DEC. The result is an anecdotal rather than fact based book.

DEC was a profoundly innovative company and although Schein attempts to use DEC as a case study of why great innovators fail his attempt lacks the clarity of Clayton Christensen's Innovators Dilemma.

Schein seems to have several prejudices and blind spots. He thinks DEC lacked the "business/money gene" (this point is made repeatedly by Schein) but Gordon Bell refutes this idea in his appendix to the book. Schein also ascribes negative traits to engineers, and electrical engineers in particular, while at the same time demonstrating that he understood little of the technology that DEC developed during the time he consulted for the corporation.

I would like to have read more on why DEC failed to become the Internet hardware and software supplier of choice, given that it had all the pieces and was deeply involved in networking and standards setting (DEC being actively involved in many successful standards efforts). Also why was the lead that DEC had in chip design and fabrication (way ahead of Intel) not exploited more fully at the low end.