Riding the Runaway Horse: The Rise and Decline of Wang Laboratories

Riding the Runaway Horse came out more than fifteen years ago. As a business history, it captured the views held by many observers and former Wang employees around 1992. The author supports with plenty of interviews his claim that An Wang's character strengths and weaknesses created and ultimately doomed Wang Labs. His claim may be correct; at least the preponderance of his evidence supports him. But as shareholders, what can we learn about other surviving businesses from the Wang story? Probably not enough to make a good and also timely investment decision. Great human interest story, though.

An Wang did okay. In fact, he did more than okay. He did great. He did work that he enjoyed, and he did it well. And he used his money to support a lot of good causes. No, when the company became huge, he didn't handle it well, but very few entrepreneurs are able to make this transition. The big strategic error was failing to pursue personal computers. This now seems incredible, but at the time, at the time, how many people did predict that a workplace would be filled with dozens and dozens of computers, networked together in various ways? For example, when I took computer programming in 11th grade in 1979-1980, we had one computer for the class (and we had to load a program using a cassette tape). This book generally takes a chronological approach, which I think makes any story better. At times, the author overexplains, so you might want to skip an occasional passage. All in all, a good read.

A gripping book focussing on the helter skelter developments at the computer company. Will bring tears to anyone who worked for any length of time at the Lowell Mass facility in the seventies or eighties. s. ganesh