DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation [Paperback]

Edgar H Schein (Author), Paul J Kampas (Contributor), Peter S Delisi (Contributor), Michael M Sonduck (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 9, 2004

Digital Equipment Corporation achieved sales of over $14 billion, reached the Fortune 50, and was second only to IBM as a computer manufacturer. Though responsible for the invention of speech recognition, the minicomputer, and local area networking, DEC ultimately failed as a business and was sold to Compaq Corporation in 1998. This fascinating modern Greek tragedy by Ed Schein, a high-level consultant to DEC for 40 years, shows how DEC's unique corporate culture contributed both to its early successes and later to an organizational rigidity that caused its ultimate downfall.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 317 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (August 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576753050
• ISBN-13: 978-1576753057
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #587,953 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The lasting lesson of DEC, November 25, 2003

By 

Stephen Buckley (Winthrop, MA United States) - See all my reviews

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

MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Edgar Schein does a marvelous job telling the story of the rise and fall of Digital Equipment Corporation, the former #2 computer maker in the world behind IBM. The business reasons behind DEC's economic failure have been widely reported (missing the advent of the PC, having too many projects going at once, failure to market products effectively, etc.) However, the big question to be answered is why did these failures occur? To quote one passage, "Why did an organization that was wildly successful for thirty-five years, filled with intelligent, articulate powerful engineers and managers, fail to act effectively to deal with problems that were highly visible to everyone, both inside and outside the organization?"

Schein looks at DEC's failure through the lens of its corporate culture, and how it prohibited their executives from making the decisions, and taking the actions necessary to survive. Fans of Ed Schein will know his famous "Three Cultures of Management" paper, in which he describes the "Executive", "Line Manager" and "Engineering" cultures, all of which must exist and be balanced against one another for an organization to survive. Schein argues that DEC was dominated by the engineering culture, which valued innovation and "elegant" design, over profits and operational efficiency. This engineering culture dominated even the top levels of DEC, where proposals to build PCs out of off the shelf parts that were readily available in the marketplace, were shot down because the machines were thought to be junk compared to the ones DEC could build themselves.

That DEC was able to survive for as long as it did was largely attributable to its ability to innovate in a field that was so new it had not yet coalesced around certain standard systems, software and networks. However, as the computer industry became in effect a commodity market, and the buyers began to value price over innovation, DEC found itself increasingly unable, and in fact, unwilling to compete. The engineering culture which valued innovation and required creative freedom, did not want to subject itself to the requirements of being a commodity player which demanded autocratic operational efficiency and control over how resources were allocated.

Although DEC is now long gone, even readers who were too young to use computers at the time of its demise will find familiar truths in this book. As the old saying goes, the fish in the tank does not see the water it is in. Neither do we often see the cultures in which we are ourselves embedded. The real lesson of this wonderful book is to show us how our corporate cultures often prohibit us from doing the right things, even when we can see them clearly. Sometimes culture is most easily visible in the things you need to discuss, but that are simply "not on the table" for discussion.

There are many lessons here too, for companies that seek to innovate new products and services, and how to balance the creative freedom desired by the engineering culture with the "money gene" culture of sound executive management. The names of companies that have failed to realize the full financial benefits of their technical innovations is too long to list here. But the DEC story is a must read for anyone who seeks to balance innovation with sustainable economic success in any organization.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A provacative read, March 28, 2004

By 

J. Mcnamara (Maynard, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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

Many discussions and articles that chronicle the rise and fall of Digital simplify the failure to either "The president [Ken Olsen] blew it," or "They missed the PC revolution," or some combination of both. This book shows how the culture that so successfully nourished creativity and genius in the company's nascent days brought chaos, confusion, and internecine warfare in later days when the larger company faced a host of competitors and needed to efficiently produce commodity items. I think that the authors go a little too lightly on the role of (mis)management in Digital's failure, but they do a good job of bringing to light many other aspects of Digital's problematic history. The authors seem a bit full of themselves at times, but they have a compelling and sobering story to tell.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Needed to be written, needs to be read, January 30, 2005

By 

Bryan MacKinnon (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation (Hardcover)

I recommend this book to anyone who is familiar with DEC or wishes to understand its enduring legacies. It is also a useful case study on who a company that was doing so well could ultimately fail; are Microsoft and IBM really immune from this fate?

I used DEC equipment during its heyday from the late 1970's throughout the 1980s. What I value most is how the technical experiences I recall from that time were given depth. The author's narrative binds together a collection of internal memos and personal recollections of many of those who were working at DEC when many of its fateful decisions were made. In general, responsibility for the ultimate failure of DEC to survive as a company is laid with the senior management, in particular with CEO Ken Olsen. The same attributes that made DEC great and innovative were the ones that lead to its downfall. Alas, DEC is not dead but lives on in all the innovations it introduced.

I would like liked to have seen some more details on the technical innovations and more exposure to the myths and legends that many of us were weaned on. But that was not the main thesis of the book so it's not a deficiency per se.

Though written in a straightforward and matter of fact way with little flourish, I was engrossed and quickly polished it off. This book needed to be written.