Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters
"In Search of Stupidity" by Merrill "Rick" Chapman is a must read for anyone in technology sales and marketing. It is laugh-out-loud funny, while at the same time accurate and factual.
If you were in business, any business, in 1982 you read "In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best Run Companies" by Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman. It was the "feel good" book for business managers and we, the yellow-power-tie wearing business managers of that era, carried it around the way the followers of Chairman Mao carried his writings during the cultural revolution in China. We went to training courses that taught us to have an "excellent corporate culture." Twenty-five years later, many of these "excellent" companies were gone, extinct like the dodo.
Companies like MicroPro International, VisiCorp, Ashton-Tate and many more are gone. Where was their excellence when they needed it? Of the Top 10 software companies in 1984 only Microsoft survived to the Top Ten list in 2001. Wait a minute! Companies that were dominant players in a booming market went out of business? How did that happen?
In Search of Stupidity recounts in detail the marketing blunders that brought the once-mighty down. From companies alienating their customer bases to companies that offer competing products to multi-year projects to rewrite code, you will find a litany of blunders that make you say "What were they thinking?"
Rick Chapman has an easy-to-read writing style and a acerbic wit. Parts of the book are literally laugh-out-loud funny. But more to the point, he has what is referred to today as "street cred." This is a book from a man who has manned the booths at trade-shows, who has gone out to demo product. In other words, from a sales guy who has actually sold high-tech products.
He supports his arguments both with references and statistics, but also with personal experience. He met and knew many of the players involved and his anedotes are priceless.
If you are in technology sales or marketing, my advice is get this book and learn the lessons.