I should perhaps have written "failure to come to terms with disruptive technology".
Certainly it is possible, albeit uncommon, for an organization to come to terms with new, disruptive technology. Failures to do so may well, however, be more frequent. Retreat from the unfamiliar, back into the familiar, is common. I suspect that we are all guilty of it from time to time; and terms like 'good management' and 'bad management' describe outcomes without being diagnostic. Olsen was a remarkable man; and in DEC he created a remarkable if not a long-lived organization. Many, many years ago, as I was introduced to the DEC salesman (sic) with whom I was supposed to work to interface a DEC and an IBM system, I noticed the rat ring he was wearing and judged, rashly but in the event correctly, that he would be easy to work with. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
