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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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Product details
- Publisher : Apress; 1st edition (January 1, 2003)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 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: #2,468,578 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10,382 in Finance (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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.
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Customers find the content excellent, educational, and well-written. They also find the humor funny and lively enough to keep them interested. Readers describe the writing quality as fast, lively, and well-written, saying it's readable.
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Customers find the content excellent, well-written, and educational. They say it's entertaining and has some of the best software anecdotes. Readers also mention the book is fascinating, funny, and indispensable for anyone who wants to learn about computers.
"...The book is filled with history, in a level of detail that only an insider (which he was) could know, and marketing insight, with a nuts-and-bolts..." Read more
"...More readable and infinitely more useful." Read more
"...While the content of the book is excellent (5+ stars), I was hugely disappointed by the print quality. It just looks like a cheap photocopy...." Read more
"The book is well-done and has some of the best software anecdotes... and discussions of marketing... that I have read in quite some time...." Read more
Customers find the humor in the book entertaining, funny, and instructive. They also say it's a quick, amusing read that keeps them interested. Readers mention the book is written with humor, irony, and descriptiveness.
"...is not as a writer, but you'd never tell it from how well this book is written- humor, irony, and descriptiveness are wound artfully through most of..." Read more
"...Also the author, Rick Chapman, has a nice sense of humor from my point of view." Read more
"I found this book fascinating, funny and indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how high tech got to where it is today...." Read more
"...This one was lively enough to keep me interested...." Read more
Customers find the writing quality of the book well-written, readable, and good.
"...I also enjoyed it for a second reason: the quality of the writing...." Read more
"...More readable and infinitely more useful." Read more
"Easy read that reviews recent history of software industry...." Read more
"Outdated, obviously, but still a pretty good read." Read more
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Apparently, the author's career is not as a writer, but you'd never tell it from how well this book is written- humor, irony, and descriptiveness are wound artfully through most of his descriptions.
Take, for example, this passage, where he's discussing the marketing of the Ford Mustang vs. the Ford Falcon- to illustrate how IBM's mistakes with the PC Jr. shared some things in common with Ford's mistakes with the Falcon:
"Mustangs were fun, sexy, and desirable. Mustang owners were intelligent and cool people with a great sense of value, the type of folks you wished would invite you to a barbecue at their place. Of course, the Mustang, <like the Falcon> also wouldn't go very fast (though it looked like it could), got good gas mileage, and was very economical to run. This is because it was, underneath its alluring sheet metal, nothing more than a reskinned Ford Falcon. But by dint of good design, ... the Mustang became a car you could aspire to, whereas the Falcon was just a cheap set of wheels."
That's a lot more interesting to read, IMO, than most high-tech history books, or marketing manuals.
Yet, the author wraps in lots of value in those areas, as well. The book is filled with history, in a level of detail that only an insider (which he was) could know, and marketing insight, with a nuts-and-bolts examination that makes sense out of large & complicated industry situations.
I've really enjoyed reading, and dipping back into, this book. I almost never open up books after I've read them, but this one is an exception. I find myself keeping it around where I can get to it easily- and reading excerpts just for the fun of it. IMO, this guy's writing is great.
Perhaps that's why this book reminds me of a Porsche: it's valuable, it's well-designed, but better yet, you find yourself having fun while you're also getting someplace.
I'm so relieved to finally see a book written by someone that not only recounts the history accurately, but also explains very logically why so many marketing tactics were so bad. In the very beginning of the book he describes Motorola's Iridium system (a satellite-based cellular phone that allowed anyone to use their phone any where in the world by launching 66 extremely expensive low-orbit satellites to cover the entire planet Earth.) Not only were the phones large and barely portable, but you had to use them outdoors, with no obstructions (like a tree) and 'point them at the satellite.' With all those inconveniences, no one apparently considered that 70% of the Earth is covered by nothing but water.
I never thought of that before. It's both obvious and, at the same time, brilliant and clever thinking/deduction.
He repeats this logic throughout the book, citing examples that refresh my memory of the fabulous 1980s and early 1990's.
If you really want to know the real reason why things turned out the way they are today, read a book written by someone who not only observed it, but interacted with it. For example, this book.
Still, it's a blast to learn about the boneheadedness of some of these people.
That being said, I don't want to detract from the overall thrust of the book, which is that a lot of failures were do to inept marketing by the failed companies. In fact in general all of the blunders were due to the ineptitude of upper management in most of these ultimately failed companies. Also the author, Rick Chapman, has a nice sense of humor from my point of view.
Top reviews from other countries
I like the fact that Merrill Chapman (the author) has been involved in the high-tech industry from its earliest days and has worked for many of the companies featured in the book and therefore not just another business analyst.
In search of Stupidity is easy to read, very funny and not just for those in the high-tech industries or doing business studies.
It helps to explain why so many millions of people are now sat in front of a PC running Microsoft software and not say an Apple Mac computer and how quickly that could change. How success built on years of good decisions can be wiped out with just one stupid decision.
All company managers should read this book, not just in the high-tech industries; it might stop more stupid decisions being made, although it seems that far too often lessons from the past are ignored.
少々例が古い箇所もあるが、20年働いていても同じIT業界とは言えやはり広い世界なので知らない事も多い。
例えばdBase2は、単にdBaseないしdBase1と名付けるとバグが多いと仮定されるため2を付けた結果であるとのこと。
dBase2を知らない世代の方が多いかも知れないが、過去にそういうデータベース製品があった。
(IBMのDB2については何も語っていないので悪しからず)
この書籍の中で「技術がちっとも分かっていないMBA連中」と「経営が全く分かっていない技術者の連中」の軋轢が
書いてあって、心から楽しく読ませて貰った。技術者は製品のソースコードを書き直したいもので、経営者は1日でも
早く製品を世に出したいもので、結局両者の綱引きの結果が我々の前に製品として提示されている訳だ。日本で言えば
営業と技術者の微妙な関係に置き換えられる。片や嘘つきと呼び、一方を偏屈と評する関係である。恐らくIT業界で
働いている方々には苦笑の連続だろう。
この本でのマイクロソフト評が「他のIT企業と比較して愚かさ程度が軽かったために1人勝ちした」とあるのは辛辣ではあるが、
同時代の企業が「マイクロソフトと同等かそれ以上の技術を持ちながら自滅して行った過程を見据えてのこと」である。
卓見ではないだろうか。内輪受けでは終らない、どの業界でも同じ諸行無常を誰もが感じると思う。


