Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer

by Douglas K. Smith (Author), Robert C. Alexander (Author)

32 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-1583482667

ISBN-10: 1583482660

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Ask consumers and users what names they associate with the multibillion dollar personal computer market, and they will answer IBM, Apple, Tandy, or Lotus. The more knowledgable of them will add the likes of Microsoft, Ashton-Tate, Compaq, and Borland. But no one will say Xerox. Fifteen years after it invented personal computing, Xerox still means "copy." Fumbling the Future tells how one of America's leading corporations invented the technology for one of the fastest-growing products of recent times, then miscalculated and mishandled the opportunity to fully exploit it. It is a classic story of how innovation can fare within large corporate structures, the real-life odyssey of what can happen to an idea as it travels from inspiration to implementation. More than anything, Fumbling the Future is a tale of human beings whose talents, hopes, fears, habits, and prejudices determine the fate of our largest organizations and of our best ideas. In an era in which technological creativity and economic change are so critical to the competitiveness of the American economy, Fumbling the Future is a parable for our times.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Doug Smith has drawn the lessons for "On Value and Values" from hiswork across more than 40 industries and professions as a teacher, lawyer, writer, historian, consultant, and thinker. Named in "The GuruGuide" as one of the worldOs leading management thinkers, he is author orcoauthor of five books, including "Make Success Measurable," "TheDiscipline of Teams, Taking Charge of Change," and the internationalbestsellers "The Wisdom of Teams and Fumbling the Future: " "How XeroxInvented Then Ignored Personal Computing," His work has been featured in"Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, TheNew York Times," and "The McKinsey Quarterly," and has been cited forinnovation and impact by experts ranging from Tom Peters to WarrenBennis. Smith holds a B.A. from Yale and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.He lives in LaGrangeville, New York

Paperback: 276 pages
Publisher: iUniverse (June 1, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1583482660
ISBN-13: 978-1583482667
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 32 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #236,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #73 in Books > Computers & Technology > History & Culture > History
- #424 in Books > Science & Math > Technology > History of Technology
- #617 in Books > Business & Money > Biography & History > Company Profiles

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CTed

This is a great business case and learning tool. Some parts are tedious due to superfluous details, but worth the read overall.

February 24, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Fumbling the Future, by Douglas Smith and Robert Alexander, is a detailed analysis of Xerox’s venture into the personal computer industry in the 1970s. Xerox, the undoubted leader in the photocopy business, experienced booming financial growth and no competitor stood a chance against the giant. Xerox executives realized that computers represented the dawn of a new age in office technology and an opportunity for immense financial gains. They wanted a piece of the pie. As a result, Xerox entered the computing industry and developed the Alto, the first personal computer. Additionally, the company created a technology research department and computer research laboratory to stake its claim in the industry. In a relatively short time, Xerox’s computer division was packed full of the brightest minds in computer science. On the surface, it seemed that Xerox would gain generous profits, but instead, Xerox’s computing endeavors lead to massive financial devastation.

Under the surface, Xerox suffered from many weaknesses related to management’s poor understanding of how to run a computer business. This dragged Xerox into a downward spiral of poor investment decisions, mismanagement, disjointed business strategies, and conflicts among departments. When Xerox reached its weakest point, lawsuits and a financial recession drained the company of vital resources and began to dig a grave for Xerox executives’ hopes and dreams. The company suffered a colossal financial loss.

This is a rich historical case study that retains its relevance today. Unlike many case studies, this one recognizes the human element of business decision-making and delves quite deeply into it. The text identifies managers responsible for Xerox’s poor decisions and explains how their personalities and their relationships with others influenced the company’s direction. This unique perspective is invaluable. Another positive is that the chapters are rich with contextual information surrounding Xerox’s actions and will not leave readers wondering why or how important events occurred. Each chapter is chalked full of clear examples of missed opportunities and poor decision-making, but also highlights effective decisions and how/when they turned into poor ones. The book will more than satisfy those who are eager for detail and hungry for context.

A business reader who values succinctness may find a lot of the information superfluous. The abundance of detail can occasionally distract from vital aspects of the case. Readers may have to mentally weed-out less relevant details to gain a stronger grasp of the situation. Additionally, there are many different character names, which can make it easy to confuse protagonists. The book’s organization is not entirely chronological either. There are frequent jumps in time, which can result in a misunderstanding of the timeline of events and dates. The beginning of the book dives deeply into the technologies developed at Xerox and the technological evolution of computing. Although interesting, this level of depth is not needed to understand the case; some may find it excessive and tedious to read. Lastly, the latter half of the book becomes repetitive, as certain events are repeated from different points of view. Overall, the educational value of this book far outweighs its shortcomings.

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Bas Vodde

Organizational politics at Xerox

November 29, 2009

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Fumbling the Future explores how it is possible that Xerox was so important in the creation of personal computing, yet they failed to market it themselves. It is less of a book about the technology and more about the politics within a large organization that can kill a good idea.

The book starts with describing the history of Xerox, where they came from and how they became already a large company before the famous PARC lab. It continues with a thread that runs throughout the book, the speech from the CEO which sets the vision for the company as "the architecture of information." This vision led to the creation of PARC and drove the research efforts in the lab.

Bob Taylor who earlier ran the ARPANet efforts, was invited to run the PARC lab (or, to do the recruiting). Bob got people he knew from his earlier ARPA effort and quickly gathered a huge amount of talent in the lab. They started their research and invented e.g. PCs, ethernet, laser printer, and word processors. This technology was more advanced than the things outside of PARC lab.

Xerox, as an organization, failed to exploit the advantages in technology because of organizational politics. Most of the book describes these in fairly much detail. Several camps existed within Xerox management who could not get along. The ex-Ford people, who had the most amount of power within Xerox for a while, ignored the things coming out of PARC. There was even friction between the head of research and Bob Taylor as Bob created an us-them atmosphere which might have helped the research but definitively not the exploitation of it.

In the end, people started leaving PARC lab. Politics within the lab grew stronger and stronger and eventually Bob Taylor got fired. Many senior researchers followed them to his new job and the period of major inventions within PARC ceased.

At first, I was disappointed by this book. It seemed to make minor mistakes related to technology. The authors are not experts in technology. Later, I got over my disappointment and enjoyed the detailed description of the politics within the management. It's rare to read such a detailed account of what goes on within a company over many of years. That perspective of the book I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend it for that. If you expect a book about the creation of the technology within PARC, then this is not the book for you however.

Recommended, though not a 5 star book. 4 stars.

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Lee by the Sea

Good book shoddily converted to Kindle

April 7, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

"Fumbling the Future" is the famous book that explains why it took Steve Jobs to pry the incredible personal-computer inventions of Xerox PARC out of the dysfunctional Xerox Corporation of the time. I leave it to others to discuss its content; my beef is with the Kindle conversion.

This book got mangled on its way to the Kindle. There are many, many typographical errors, often several per page. From what I see, it appears that the book was converted using optical character recognition, since most of the errors are easily understood from that point of view--extra spaces inserted, characters interpreted as if graphically altered or merged, confusion of the letter l and the number 1, and so on. A book of this quality deserved a post-edit from a human editor, though even Microsoft Word's spell-checker would have caught many of the errors. At least the price has been lowered to reflect the low quality. Caveat Emptor.

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dave keenan

well written -- explains how Xerox also crumbled their copier business

August 26, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I loved this book.

I was amazed to discover all the things PARC invented and THEN shocked to see how many at Xerox headquarters were openly hostile to their gifted-child.

I expected this book to be a heavy handed hatchet-job, but found it fairly balanced. Ego problems were rampant on both coasts. Multiple people made multiple mistakes.

Xerox was Wall Street's wunder-company in the Sixties, but Smith shows how run-away costs & quality problems crippled their basic copier business in the Seventies. Xerox mgmt didn't just fumble the future, they crumbled their present. Kodak & Canon both chopped Xerox "off at the knees" with better, cheaper, faster copiers. The phrase "hemorrhaging cash" comes up several times.

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