In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters

In Search of Stupidity gets its title from the classic, albeit infamous business book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies, by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. In Search of Excellence quickly became a best-seller when it came out in 1988 and launched a new era of management consultants and business books. But in 2001, Peters admitted that he falsified the underlying data. Librarians have been slow to move the book to the fiction section. In Search of Stupidity is not a traditional business book; rather, it's a high-level analysis of marketing mistakes made by some of the biggest and most well-known high-tech companies over the last 20 years. The book contains numerous stories of somewhat smart companies that have made stupid marketing mistakes. The catastrophe is that these mistakes have led to the demise of many of these companies. For those who have been in technology for a while, the book will be a somewhat nostalgic look at what has happened over the years from the world of high-tech marketing. Combined with Chapman's often hilarious observations, the book is a most enjoyable and fascinating read and is hard to put down once you start. The first chapters of the book discuss the story and mythology around the origins of DOS. It details such luminaries as Digital Research, IBM, Microsoft, Bill Gates and Gary Kildall and more. The first myth about Microsoft is the presumption that the original contract with IBM for MS-DOS gave Microsoft an immediate and unfair advantage over its competitors. The reality is that over time, MS-DOS did indeed become Microsoft's cash cow; but it took the idiocy of Apple, IBM and others to make this happen. The book also notes that throughout its history, Microsoft would consistently make the most of its competitor's mistakes and stupidity to its advantage. The book repeatedly notes that yes, Microsoft has not always been ethical or nice; but the reality is that such behavior has also been practiced by many in the software industry. Not that it rationalizes what Microsoft has done, and to a degree still does. But it is unfair to pinpoint Microsoft as the sole miscreant in the dirty software waters. For the better part of the last decade, Microsoft has owned the desktop. But that was not always the case. In the early 1990's IBM was frantically working on its nascent OS/2 operating system, working alongside Microsoft as a trusted partner. IBM had the cash and talent to ensure that OS/2 would own the desktop. So why did OS/2 miserably fail? It was primarily IBM's own ineptitude in marketing OS/2 which led to Windows 95 taking over the desktop. The desktop was IBM's to lose and that is precisely what it did. Microsoft at one point was working with IBM to develop OS/2 and many have written that Microsoft took advantage of IBM in that joint effort. But Chapman writes that complete and direct responsibility for the failure of OS/2 falls completely on IBM. He notes that it is difficult

In writing this book, Chapman has done us the service of collecting over 20 years worth of corporate blunders. As such, MBAs entering the software industry would be well advised to read this book and save themselves from making the same strategic errors that led to the demise of earlier pioneers. This is a man who, in the 1980s, wore those blue Adidas running shoes with the cool yellow stripes. This is a man who sat in the front row and saw everything happen with his own eyes. His observations are both astute and hilarious. Old timers reading this book will probably not know if they want to laugh or cry. There have been reviewers who claim that Chapman's lessons are not clear. Good grief, these people haven't read the book! Rick does an incredible job of analyzing history. For example, in one chapter, he looks at the mistakes that hobbled Novell. In the 1990s, Novell decided to emphasize functionality over usability. Sure, Novell's Netware package was years ahead of the pack in terms of features. However, the engineers building Netware stubbornly insisted on sticking to a command-line interface. In short, the inmates were running the asylum.Then, there's IBM. Chapman's autopsy of OS/2 alone is worth the price of the book. Anyone who ever tried to print documents under OS/2, or run a Microsoft application under OS/2's Windows subsystem will grimace in agreement. Big Blue made one ridiculous mistake after another. It's almost as if they were trying to kill OS/2 intentionally. After reading this book, you will see Lou Gerstner in a whole new light. "In Search of Stupidity" offers a droll look at corporate demolition; one that will make you laugh,...until it hurts.

In Search of Stupidity is a light-hearted and witty history of the PC's first 25 years. At its core is an amusing, and well argued, premise that the monopolies of Microsoft and Intel were built on the stupidity of their competitors, as much as the technical and marketing prowess of Bill Gates' and Andy Grove's companies.Rick Chapman is something of a marketing guru having published an industry bible. After working at most of the companies mentioned, he often recounts from first-hand experiences of the characters involved. Generally, In Search of Stupidity is highly informative for someone like me, brought up on Macs, and who used to believe the hard-luck story put about by true (Mac) believers.According to the introduction, the idea behind the book came from In Search of Excellence, by Tom Peters, which, although phenomenally successful in terms of sales, inflicted a terrible curse on the high-tech companies that were lauded in its pages. Most of the companies praised by Peters have gone bust, and all have had some terrible problems. Chapman points out their stupid blunders for our general entertainment, and in the hope that others following on from them can avoid their pitfalls. Although it is more fun gloating over a company's blunders than reading how we should all learn to emulate IBM, the question I had before reading the book was "could Chapman justify the use of the word stupid?" There is a difference between decisions that don't have the desired outcome, but were still reasonable decisions, and decisions that were plain stupid. If someone were to offer me $100 to correctly guess the toss of a coin, for a charge of $1, it would be a good decision to pay the $1 and take my chance. If the coin was tossed, and I lost, it would still have been a good decision to have taken the bet. My view is that in all but two chapters Chapman makes the stupid charge stick, and when he doesn't, it is such enjoyable reading that you have to forgive him. I laughed out loud at his description of Mark Andreessen's numerous public statements as "the strategic equivalent of doing a naked bump and grind in a hungry tiger's cage with a juicy steak attached to his butt." Overall, a hugely enjoyable and informative read for anyone with an interest in marketing, software or the history of the PC.

In 1982, Tom Peters told the world about how excellent companies were turning around the US economy. What Peters failed to recognize was that many of the companies that he was looking at weren't actually "excellent" but were in fact huge clunking dinosaurs that were producing buggy whips in the age of the automobile. New, smaller companies came around and ate the lunch of the big "excellent" guys and then proceeded to make either the exact same stupid mistakes as the big guys or new and more innovative stupid mistakes. This book basically deals with the stupidity found in high tech companies of the 1980's and 1990's. Why is Microsoft such a huge company today? It isn't because their products were better or because they cheated other companies out of their rightful place in the market. It's because they weren't as stupid as their competition. Merrill Chapman takes us through the comedy of errors that companies like Digital Research, WordStar, Lotus, and Ashton-Tate went through as they tossed their market leads aside in fits of stupidity. You can't help but laugh (or cry) at the amazing levels of stupidity that these companies exhibited. Examples: WordStar was once one of the finest word processing programs in the world. But somehow the company ended up owning two competing mediocre products. Lotus was the leader in spreadsheets but ignored the rise of Windows and allowed themselves to be knocked out of first place by Excel. These and many more examples are well documented in this book.The book is not an in-depth study of the business world. You won't find very much analysis of why a particular company made such obviously fatal errors. Why did Borland pay an outrageous sum to buy Ashton-Tate at a time when Ashton-Tate had virtually nothing that Borland needed? You won't find the answer here. What you will find is an amusing, well-written (without being vicious) examination of the collapse of perfectly good companies under the weight of their own serious errors of judgment. There is a moral to be learned from this book. It isn't necessary to be excellent. In fact, excellence can be expensive and drive up your costs so much that they make your products uncompetitive. The secret is not to be excellent, in fact you don't even have to be very smart. All you need to be is less stupid that your competitors. Just ask Microsoft.

If you've been wondering what happened to the supposedly technology-driven economy over the last few years, and some of the much-touted players that you no longer hear of, Rick Chapman's book is a must-have as you head out to vacation.In 20 years of consulting I've read a lot of books on strategy, marketing, impact of technology and the histories of companies and the captains of industry. But few have both the sweep and simultaneously the depth of Chapman's Stupidity. Oh, and don't be mislead by the flip title (it's in keeping with his irreverent style if you've ever seen him give a presentation) - it's a serious look at the strategic errors and bad assumptions that have driven companies and careers into the ground. Good to know if you beginning to wonder where your shop is headed.Be advised that there are no sacred cows in Stupidity - if you hold a certain company in reverence due to their PR efforts (which he dissects in particular for Microsoft) or perhaps just industry myth and legend, he won't give them any reverence at all.Although my expertise is in marketing and public relations, I was fascinated by the appendix on Stupid Development Tricks - which is an interview with Joel Spolsky, who some sort of product development guru. The interview brutally dissects how programmers bamboozle non-technical executives (John Sculley being my favorite example) into massive rewrites or poor development decisions - which often doom the company due to a lost window of opportunity - for all the wrong reasons.If you are the least bit curious as to how the industry got where it is -and what happened to some of the companies and players you never hear about anymore - Stupidity should be on your bookshelf.