On 6/19/2013 11:14 AM, John Gilmore wrote:
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.
Unless one is in the possession of detailed data, unlikely to become public, it is difficult to judge why a company makes decisions. It is doubtful that clinical kainophobia is pertinent; more likely factors are cash flow, risk aversion, sales projections, and other non-technical issues. For a successful company like DEC, technical aspects were the least of their problems, as they had exemplary staff, including some ex-IBMers. This is why I conclude that their collapse and sale was due to poor management, even if that doesn't provide any specifics.
Olsen was a remarkable man; and in DEC he created a remarkable if not a long-lived organization.
I see an analogue with physicists, who are reputed to make all great discoveries when young, and very little thereafter. Once you have the second largest computer company, what incentive is there to gamble it away, rather than progress incrementally?
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, Vermont ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
