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In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters Hardcover – January 1, 2003
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— Jeff "Hemos" Bates, Director, OSDN Online & Executive Editor, Slashdot. Rick Chapman knows where the bodies are buried&emdash;when most people have forgotten there was even a murder. This history of tech marketing disasters is well-written, enjoyable, and gets its facts straight. Gives us an amusing (and sometimes embarrassing) array of anecdotes of how far we've come (and not come) in high technology...a fun read, with many invaluable lessons. An invaluable history lesson in how to avoid monumental marketing mistakes that are unfortunately common in the software industry. Having followed many of these companies and products over the years, I'd often wondered why such smart people made such weird choices. Rick Chapman has many of the answers.
— James Fallows, former editor-in-chief, US News and World Report, and regular writer for The Atlantic
In Search of Stupidity is National Lampoon meets Peter Drucker. It's a funny and well-written business book that takes a look at some of the most influential marketing and business philosophies of the last 20 years and, through the dark glass of hindsight, provides an educational and vastly entertaining examination of why they didn't work for many of the country's largest and best-known high-tech companies. Make no mistake: most of them did not work.
Marketing wizard Richard Chapman takes readers on a hilarious ride in this book, which is richly illustrated with cartoons and reproductions of many of the actual campaigns used at the time. Filled with personal anecdotes spanning Chapman's remarkable career (he was present at many now-famous meetings and events), In Search of Stupidity is a no-holds-barred look at the best of the worst hopeless marketing ideas and business decisions in the last 20 years of the technology industry.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherApress
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2003
- Dimensions6.73 x 1.26 x 9.76 inches
- ISBN-101590591046
- ISBN-13978-1590591048
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About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Apress
- Publication date : January 1, 2003
- Edition : 1st
- Language : English
- Print length : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1590591046
- ISBN-13 : 978-1590591048
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.73 x 1.26 x 9.76 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,050,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,496 in Finance (Books)
About the author

Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman is the managing editor and publisher of Softletter, an online newsletter that covers the business of software marketing. His latest book is the third edition of In Search of Stupidity: Over 40 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters. The first two editions have sold 100 thousand copies worldwide and have been translated into seven languages, including Chinese, Hebrew, Italian, Korean and Japanese.
His other books include SaaS Entrepreneur: The Definitive Guide to Succeeding in Your Cloud Application Business” and two novels, Selling Steve Jobs' Liver: A Story of A Story of Startups, Innovation, and Connectivity in the Clouds. Rule-Set: A Novel of a Quantum Future. Liver follows the adventures of two serial-failure entrepreneurs who obtain the late technology titan's original liver and embark on an exciting entrepreneurial journey to build a new company and technology that will disrupt the market's current model of interacting and communicating with those in the post life.
In his career Rick has worked as a programmer, sales engineer, product manager, and VP of marketing and product management. Rick is currently at work on his next book, Bare Ruined Wires: How Big Social Media destroyed America’s Trust and Faith In High Technology. Wires is scheduled for a June, 2022 release. The next release in the Rule-Set series is due in autumn, 2022.
