By Alec Hogg
Every business school graduate has heard the story of subsequently bankrupted Eastman Kodak whose executives shelved the seismic breakthrough by employee Steven Sasson, an electrical engineer who invented the first digital camera. But an even worse example of internal neglect was by copier company Xerox, which should have dominated the entire computer industry.
In 1970, Xerox created the storied Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) into which it injected some of America’s finest scientific minds. But when these collaborative geniuses came up with the software that was to popularise personal computers – and the “mouse” that made them easy to use – their invention was rejected because “we’re a copier company”.
The benefits of those seismic discoveries were reaped by PARC visitors Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who used what Xerox HQ decided to ignore to create the giants we know as Apple and Microsoft. Their actions also provide us with a “classic zinger” recorded by Walter Isaacson in his superb book The Innovators.
When a furious Jobs called in his rival to accuse Microsoft Windows of being an Apple ripoff, Gates replied with: “Well Steve, there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found that you had already stolen it.” And both did so while Xerox’s execs were on the couch and slept through it all.
