Amazon.com

No matter what happens in the future with the tech sector in general or to Cisco Systems in particular, the company that made the router almost a household name will be known forever as a bellwether behemoth in the networking industry--and one who got that way largely through a shrewd acquisition strategy. Inside Cisco, by veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ed Paulson, examines how the company nimbly absorbed 70 firms since 1993 and, at least until the postmillennial tech crash, managed to leverage the people and technology it added into impressive, continual advancement. "In fact," Paulson writes, "the company has been so successful with its acquisitions that the industry created a new term for Cisco's type of research and development approach: acquisition and development." With an eye toward making this agile, adaptive strategy accessible to others, Paulson analyzes the practice and rationale behind it and then assesses how portable its elements are to other companies and industries. Explorations of everything from due diligence to the integration of personnel, products, and production are supplemented by specific examples, comments from people directly involved, and Paulson's own experienced perspective. --Howard Rothman ... Read more

Reviews (7)

A textbook for M&A managers
Please allow me to disclose my bias... I am a former Cisco M&A, or as Ed Paulson would say a
Cisco A&D (Acquisitions and Development).
And a disclaimer: These comments are my own, and represent my own opinions, not Cisco Systems's.

To position Ed's book, let's first look at the current body of M&A research.

"We know surprisingly little about mergers and acquisitions, despite the
buckets of ink spilled on the topic. In fact our collective knowledge can be
summed up in a few short sentences", noted Joseph Bower in his article "Not
all M&A are alike - and that's what matters" (Harvard Business Review, March
2001). A year later, Roy Harris wrote in his article "A lesson before
buying: University executive-education programs tackle one of the business
world's toughest jobs: Teaching M&A",

"You feel the question taking shape in the opening lecture of Robert
Holthausen's "Mergers and Acquisitions" class. As the Wharton professor
recounts the problems with deal-making today, ticking off two dozen reasons
why mergers fail--from valuation errors to culture clashes--the discouraging
statistics fly by on the screen behind him. McKinsey says 74 percent of
deals fail to create shareholder value, KPMG says it's 83 percent. At last,
the inevitable hand shoots up in front: 'Is this going to be a class about
why we shouldn't acquire anybody?'" (May, 2002, CFO The Magazine for Senior
Financial Executives)

Paulson's "Inside Cisco: The Real Story of Sustained M&A Growth" provides a
well researched analysis on how to do successful M&As. I hope the book will
be used as a textbook at many American and international executive M&A
programs.

Insightful!
There's no reason to beat around the bush: This is not an objective history of Cisco. It is an unabashedly adulatory look at one of the most influential companies of the New Economy. If you're looking for a critical assessment of Cisco's business model and execution, look elsewhere. That does not mean that you should ignore Inside Cisco, however. On the contrary, we from getAbstract strongly recommend this book for its detailed dissection of Cisco's acquisition methodology, from its target identification and selection to integration and employee retention. Anyone in business would do well to read this book, study these processes and make them their own.

Growth Through Acquisitions
"To date, your book Inside Cisco: The real story behind sustained M&A growth is my favorite regarding the topic of mergers and acquisitions. I used to work at a Merchant Bank in Irvine doing financial analysis in connection with mergers and acquisitions for a summer and a lot of the work we did involved growth through acquisitions. Your book clearly explains a lot of the rationale behind M&A strategies."

Douglas Lee

A detailed look at an acquisition system that worked!
This is an easy to read book that covers a lot of what made Cisco succeed in the 1990s. I liked the conversational writing style but also got a lot out of the content. A solid book that anyone looking to grow their business through acquisition should read.

inside cisco
A detailed history of one of the most successful M&A companies in American business. Paulson's added insights and suggestions make this more than a narrative history, this book is a practical handbook for anyone doing M&A work. Well-written and fun to read. Another source of keen business advice from this author. Check out his other books, particularly the Idiot's Guide to Starting a Small Business, which I have kept within arm's reach of my desk since it came out. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

From Rags to Riches- Indeed!
Every detail about this man is worth reading. It tells you that if you have the urge within you to do something you really can do it. It has definitely motivated me a lot. It is also very well written and makes you feel "I wish I was a part of the Amazon family"

Interesting.
I get the impression from this book is that the only the author has written before was his signature. While the story was very interesting it was quite poorly written.

Read High St@kes, No Prisoners by Charles Ferguson instead.

A fascinating story of an idea turning into a business.
If you want to understand what's involved with starting an internet business from scratch, this book will provide a detailed look at how CDnow became successful, despite humble beginnings. The story of Jason and Matthew Olim's business, from concept to profitable operation, is fascinating, and instructive for entrepreneurs and corporate types alike. With the able guiding hand of Peter Kent (the journalist/author) this book is well-written and easy to read. I'd recommend it highly.

Kids, don't try this at home....unless you read this first.
Jason and Matthew Olim, along with veteran Internet writer Peter Kent, have done a marvelous job of documenting the meteoric rise of the Internet's number one online music service. The CDNow Story takes the reader from the conceptualization stage, through the rocky startup, into the current stabilization and growth phase, and finishes with a look to the future. While this story chronicles a music-oriented business, parallels can be drawn to just about any business or industry.

The CDNow Story begins just five years ago with an idea that Jason Olim had about starting a music distribution business online. Joined by childhood and college friends, as well as his twin brother Matthew, this unlikely group gave birth to CDNow in the basement of their parents' home. Using a cobbled together collection of computers and networking hardware, they built the initial iteration of the CDNow system. Not only were they met with a challenge of putting together the hardware, but also the software that goes along with such an endeavor. This was years before your average computer store even had a shelf full of Internet books. Most of what they used as part of their system, was written by either one of the brothers, or one of the band of friends that followed the Olims. Add to the rest of the success is the supportive parents, often maxing out their credit cards to support the CDNow corporation.

Once the Olims had their prototype system up and functioning, the unanticipated growth presented very interesting problems. Moving from the basement to a less than suitable office, these two novice entrepreneurs continued to move forward, taking on a tremendously steep learning curve along the way. Many lessons were learned the hard way, from the basic facts that it takes money to make money...to the fact that there's a time and a place for a ponytail and sneakers in big business. Meeting with venture capitalists is one of those places where trips to the barber shop and shoeshine center make sense. The lessons learned might have been painful and sometimes embarrassing, but the brothers' Olim were able to find the expertise they lacked in order to make the business self sustaining. Like Ronald Reagan, these young men surrounded themselves with the expertise they would need to go forth and slay dragons, real or imagined.

The CDNow Story preaches very sound Internet commerce principles. These principles go to the heart of another book by Peter Kent, Poor Richard's Web Site. The key concept covered champions the merit of providing Internet Web Surfers exceptional content and a reason to return to the site. It fights the notion that a cool website will bring in lots of money and surfers. The truth of the matter is that there are still many web surfers out there still using 56K or slower modems...and they are not willing to wait the length of time many web sites take to load. Due to current downloading bandwidth restrictions, the bottom line answer is that content will out perform "cool" any time on the Web.

Towards the end of the book where the tone of the story goes from historical to projecting into the future, I began to get a little bit scared. This is where the average reader might be tempted to go out and start something on the Internet, just for the sake of doing it. The discussions of the kind of profits businesses can handle are deceptively alluring. The book goes on to warn people that the profits of those businesses will be astonishing, while the losses will be horrendous.

I think that anyone reading this book will learn a great deal about what a business might want to consider when setting up shop on the information superhighway, but there are many twists, curves, and stretches along this road that are definitely negotiated at a safe speed. An enjoyable and informative book, the CDNow Story should definitely make your Internet reading list. Like most things though, it might be good to keep this in mind: Kids, don't try this at home. These are professionals!

A postscript added by Peter Kent sets an impressive hook with a reader. This much-shortened outline of Kent's recent work, Poor Richard's Web Site: Geek-Free, Commonsense Advice on Building a Low-Cost Web Site is an excellent quick reference guide for any potential Internet entrepreneur. Poor Richard's Web Site is a must read for any entrepreneur interested in getting their product, company or image on the World Wide Web.

Brilliant insight into starting up an online business
I found the CDnow Story facinating. It told the story of how two young men followed a dream to develop a highly successful and innovative business with virtually nothing but their instinct and dedication. They were the true pioneers of online shopping, which spurred on many other online shopping enterprises. The Olim brothers had a fantastic intuition about the powers of the Internet, and created a business that many have attempted to follow. ... Read more

Book Description

An inside look at one of the greatest business stories of our day: Lou Gerstner's dramatic transformation of IBM from a dying company into a nimble giant

When Lou Gerstner took the helm at IBM in 1993, the company was headed toward bankruptcy. Six years later Big Blue was back and better than ever: its stock at an all-time high; its coffers filled with cash; and its market capitalization a healthy $169 billion. How did Gerstner do it?

With unprecedented access to current and former IBM employees, and drawing upon more than 150 interviews and hundreds of pages of documents, journalist Doug Garr offers the first in-depth took at the IBM miracle and the man who made it happen. From the complete overhaul of the company's image and culture to the takeover of Lotus and the development of network technology, Garr vividly illustrates Gerstner's operating methods, management philosophy, and vision. Fastpaced and fascinating, IB14 Redux provides rare insight into the world of information services and offers prescient advice on what IBM and its competitors need to do to keep on thriving in the twenty-first century.

Reviews (20)

More a story about Gerstner than IBM
The book follows Gerstner from his McKinsey & Co. days through 1998 IBM. It seemed as much a story about Gerstner as it was about IBM's recovery. My own opinion is that the book tends to leave material unfinished. For example, there is a lot of drama and personality play in a large section devoted to the Lotus acquisition. However, the writer doesn't explain how the acquisition benefited IBM in terms of its turn-around.

In summary, it's an entertaining read but I was left with the feeling that it's a Gerstner book more than it is the story of "the turn-around of the decade."

In comparison, I thought "From Worst to First" by Continental Airlines' CEO Bethune was far more focused on what has to be done to reverse a company's fortunes than was this book.

High-level view w/ limited visibility
It's a good read for drama, a good intro to IBM if you know little or nothing about the company, a very detailed, balanced, and probably accurate profile of Gerstner. Writing a business bio about a tech company no doubt forces an author into some tough choices as to how much detail about the technology to leave in or leave out, but Garr does a good job at providing a non-techies view of the industry.

From a business-acumen point of view, however, it lacks. Some of the questions, such as "Why doesn't IBM sell off its unprofitable PC division?" are handled in a rather simplistic manner. A good MBA will tell you there are plenty of reasons to keep "unprofitable" business units around for cash-flow reasons; and that it can be dangerous to sell these off.

This is a good quick read for anyone in the high tech backbone business. Big blue remains the world's largest high tech company, but acts more like any other blue chip. Regardless of your opinion on the company, it's presence deserves attention.

Gerstner glosses over the story
I was disappointed in the book because I felt that Gerstner was more concerned about the political correctness of his book and complimenting himself, rather than telling the whole story. Gerstner seems more than willing to describe all of the tough, and in his mind, the correct decisions he had to make during his tenure at IBM. He fails to shed much light on the fact that IBM was unable to compete in the major tecnology areas (other than the maniframe) during his tenure. Disk Drives, sold to Hitachi, PC Desktops - declared Dell the winner, Microsoft/Intel - never competed, Networking - Cisco is the winner, application software - lost to SAP, Peoplesoft, CA, etc., UNIX Servers - 3rd place finish behind SUN and HP. He only focuses on one area - services/outsourcing - where IBM was successful during his tenure. I believe that IBM could be an even stronger company today had Gerstner been able to win on more fronts. I would love to read a book about the real IBM and what really went on behind the scenes.

Biscuits and Computers
My interest in this book was generated by "Father, Son & Co: My Life at IBM and Beyond " - Thomas Watson Jr.

Despite the rapid growth and technological strengths, IBM loses customer focus and arrogance becomes a common trait among its employees. A customer in a Far Eastern country needs to wait for over 2 months to receive a quotation for an AS/400. Not hard to guess what follows.

One of America's most admired companies, IBM starts slipping, losing over $ 16 billion in just 4 consecutive years by 1993. There was no problem about revenues. IBM was making $ 64 billion attracting most of the money spent on Information Technology. But it was spending $ 69 billion to earn it. At $ 26 billion in debt, a figure that is more than what most developing countries owed the rest of the world, it needed a miracle. It needed Lou.

A man, who was inducted from an industry that had no relevance to computing, rescues big Blue from near bankruptcy. The only thing in common between biscuits and computers is that they almost have the same shelf life. The success of both businesses requires the understanding of customer needs, speed of product introduction, inventory management and cost control. Lou Gerstner from RJR Nabisco steps in to clean up the mess at IBM- and he does this with passion and not with compassion.

Harvard educated, with extensive experience at McKinsey, American Express and RJR Nabisco, Lou brings in his own team, who again have no exposure to the computer industry. The "Cookie man hires chicken man" - Lou hires Bruce Herreld from Boston Chicken to fill in the position of Chief strategist for example. Key to the surgical operation in cost control is Jerome York from the automobile industry. And this list grows on similar lines.

Lou has his own share of blues. He would not like to remember the fiasco at Atlanta with IBM's promise of "bullet proof reliability". " If self -parody were an Olympic sport, IBM would have medaled" said Fortune Magazine. Lou's wrath against this leading business magazine is another story by itself.

There is a clear shift in the strategic direction at IBM in the recent past. Its departure from proprietary system architecture to embrace open technologies. From competition to "co-opetition". PC business is its "Vietnam". IBM realizes this and signs up with Dell to supply components in this segment. It embraces Linux and Java and quickly positions itself as e-business solution provider. Lou is again driving from basics. Biscuits and computers have so much in common- ask the customer, under-promise and over-deliver.

IBM and Lou Gerstner - Great book, interesting, fun!
This book provides a current and interesting story about Lou and IBM. I enjoyed this book very much, and highly recommend it! ... Read more

Amazon.com

If you use a personal computer or automated teller machine, make purchases online, or consume media of any kind, your life is directly impacted by the five digital-age visionaries profiled in The New Imperialists. Reams have already been written, of course, about Microsoft's Bill Gates, AOL-Time Warner's Steve Case, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, and Cisco's John Chambers. But Mark Leibovich, national technology reporter for The Washington Post, digs deeper here to present insightful individual portraits of these "generals of the networked world's ruling empires" that reveal what has really driven them to the leading edge of today's business universe. Based on some 400 interviews with relatives, friends, associates, and adversaries, in addition to one-on-one sessions with its usually more reticent subjects, the book offers a very readable account of key formative events and subsequent reactions that are not typically part of such titans' shared résumés. From the personal experiences that helped shape their generally serene youth--Ellison "had difficulty telling the truth," for example, while Chambers "battled dyslexia and for a time believed he was stupid"--to the public manifestations that now affect millions, Leibovich presents eye-opening accounts recommended for anyone drawn to the human stories behind our day's most ubiquitous corporate names. --Howard Rothman ... Read more

Reviews (9)

The New Imperialists
They were not content to do something as mundane as build a successful business. Rather, they were hell-bent on global domination. Along the way, they were afforded the stature of world leaders, idolized like rock stars, and treated like folk heroes." "When the history of the Digital Age is written, the story will be boiled down to the empires created by five men: Bill Gates, Steve Case, Larry Ellison, John Chambers, and Jeff Bezos." "They are The New Imperialists." "Yet, who really are they? Beyond the scores of cover stories, newspaper headlines, television interviews and biographies, their personal motives and motivators have remained a mystery." "Until now." "Mark Leibovich spent 18 months interviewing the men themselves and over 400 people who have known them best: family, friends, neighbors, former teachers, classmates and lovers, colleagues, employees and adversaries. Combining the information he gleaned with his own unique take on these men, Leibovich has written a fascinating collection of biographies emphasizing their little known and deeply personal quirks, motivations, warts, demons, and vanities

A Powerful Read
In case you are not familiar with the people who "virtually" rule our technology-laden world, according to Washington Post technology reporter Leibovich, they are Microsoft's Bill Gates, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, American Online (AOL)'s Steve Case, Oracle Corporation's Larry Ellison, and Cisco Systems' John Chambers.

Software-manufacturer Microsoft, of course, needs no introduction; Oracle developed the data management software used in ATMs and credit card terminals; Internet retailer Amazon.com, like most of its adversaries, uses hardware developed by Cisco to finalize consumer purchases of books, movies and CDs, among other products; and the world's most successful Internet service provider, AOL, recently became part of the world's largest media conglomerate when it merged with Time Warner.

Leibovich spent 18 months interviewing the book's subjects, and their families, friends and acquaintances, with the goal of looking at "what formed the desperate edges to their ambitions."

Gates and Ellison, at the time of writing, were the world's two richest people, respectively.

Ellison attributes his drive for success to the fear of its alternative. "I can't imagine anything worse than failing," he says. Also fearful of aging, he helps fund research on a hormone believed by some to slow the process.

Ellison is in the middle of building a compound near San Francisco which includes "an 8,000-square-foot main house; five guest residences [where guests will select food from a computer screen and have it delivered to them by boat], an underground network of basements and tunnels; a forest of cherry trees...streams, waterfalls, ponds, and a lake...a tea house, boathouse, amphitheater, indoor basketball court and recreation centre; a horse stable; three garages for Ellison's 14 cars; and a sprawling garden to be maintained by a staff of 20. The lake will be filled with purified drinking water."

Quite a step up from the apartments he lived in as a child where his adoptive father frequently told him he "would never amount to anything."

Aggressive when it came to growing his business, Ellison reportedly ended meetings by chanting, "kill, kill, kill." In his personal life, he went on "Oprah" to make "a public plea for a wife" after divorcing his first three.

Envisioning a small but successful Internet bookstore when he conceived Amazon.com in 1994, Jeff Bezos quickly discovered he was onto something and soon branched out into other product lines. In a nutshell, he's the one responsible for turning "computer screens into the new store windows," as Leibovich notes.

Bezos is known for a laugh so loud and unusual "that his younger siblings used to refuse to sit with him in movie theatres." In grade 12, his library card was revoked for laughing too loudly in the library.

Bezos is well known for scrutinizing prospective employees and Leibovich shares a story about how, when Bezos was interviewing a candidate for the position of chief financial officer for Amazon.com he asked why she had placed 2nd instead of 1st out of 27,000 when she wrote her CPA exam. The candidate replied that it was because she hadn't studied.

She got the job.

As a child, Bezos read a lot of science fiction books and would say later, "It was a great way of expanding your ideas of what's possible and what's not." Meanwhile, his mother let him watch "Star Trek" and the "Three Stooges," which could explain both the laugh and his fascination with cyberspace.

Cisco is the primary manufacturer of the equipment people and businesses use to connect to the Internet, and Leibovich describes Cisco's John Chambers as being "the executive personification of all the Internet's promise and prosperity, a man floating on the new-economy balloon. Until it popped."

A fellow Cisco executive declares, "John will often say, this will be really challenging, but isn't it really fun?!"

In the year 2000, Chambers, who has dyslexia, was paid a total of $157.3 million for running Cisco. At their highest point, Cisco shares had risen 100,000 percent since their initial public offering.

It is here that we learn of the angst Bill Gates experienced during the recent antitrust trial which would give Microsoft the dubious distinction of becoming known as "America's most embattled company." He takes his work - and Microsoft's future - seriously, saying, "If I'm worried about something at work, it's there 24 hours a day."

When he started Microsoft, he resolved the company should not take on debt, while insisting it maintain enough money to survive for one year with no sales. Obviously, that year never came. Gates currently has a net worth somewhere in the neighbourhood of $54 billion. In an interview, Leibovich asked Gates if there is "a burden in being so wealthy and having everyone know it." Gates responded, "Sure. But there is an offsetting benefit."

Gates was born into a wealthy family in Seattle, and when his mother, via intercom, asked him what he was doing in his room as a child, he ignored her. If she persisted, he'd yell, "Thinking!"

The thinking would eventually pay off, especially when he started thinking about computers, an obsession that started when he was 12.

America Online founder Steve Case is reputedly called "the Wall" at AOL due to his lack of emotion.

Of Case's childhood, Leibovich writes, "These were the dark ages before chat rooms and instant messaging, when kids called one another together by bouncing a basketball on a driveway." Case spent so much time in his room his parents called it his "office," and getting mail (the old-fashioned kind) made his day. When he wasn't in his room, the basketball games he played with his brother and childhood friends were extremely competitive, and he was known for "a penchant for the board game, Risk, where the object of the game was world domination."

Strange that later in life he would come to dominate the world's Internet service provider market.

Leibovich's book is a powerful read, providing us with a critical look at these men and their companies, and what is most interesting is how their vastly different personalities each seem suited to success.

Emperors and Empires Sill "Under Construction"
Leibovich's use of the word "imperialist" is apt to the extent that each of the five "restless kids" (Case, Chambers, Bezos, Gates, and Ellison) grew up to "virtually rule the world" and now preside over the 21st century's equivalent of an empire. Thus each can be viewed as a modern-day emperor. In that sense, they are (at least for now) among the "royalty" of the contemporary business world. Frankly, I find them much more interesting as ordinary human beings in most respects but who do indeed possess a few extraordinary talents which help to explain why each has achieved so much thus far.

Leibovich organizes her excellent material with five chapters, each dedicated to one of the "new imperialists." Having just read Florence Stone's The Oracle of Oracle: The Story of Volatile CEO Larry Ellison and the Strategies Behind His Company's Phenomenal Success, I was already well-prepared for the first chapter. Stone's comments about Ellison are remarkably;y consistent with Leibovich's, both agreeing that Ellison is one of the most complicated, sometimes contradictory, and on occasion infuriating people they have as yet encountered. Consider Leibovich's account of a conversation with Adda Quinn, to whom Ellison was once married, years before the founding of Oracle: "Quinn calls Ellison the most charming, brilliant, and non-boring man she has ever known. He also gave her an ulcer, she says, with his deceptions, darting interests, and changing moods....He had an explosive temper and Quinn said she feared for her safety as their marriage was ending. The couple kept guns in the house -- they lived in a rough part of Oakland and had been burglarize -- and she thought that Ellison was becoming increasingly erratic." There are many other similar comments by whose who had direct and frequent contact with Ellison. Obviously, Ellison is an exceptionally intelligent man but also "volatile" and, when it serves his purposes ruthless.

The chapter which interested me the most is the one devoted to John Chambers. He and the other four "achieved their dominance seemingly overnight. and to a degree that has exploded any previous notion of commercial scope and scale. Moreover their wired age goals go beyond mere geographic expansion; they incorporate a kind of lifestyle imperialism in which traditional lines of media and commerce are constantly being pushed." However, to a much greater extent than any of the others, Chambers has helped Cisco Systems to achieve its dominance through aggressive M&A initiatives and strategic partnerships. His preferred approach is collegial rather than confrontational. I also find it significant that Chambers' personality and leadership style are far less flamboyant than those of Ellison, Bezos, and Case. Also, based on the information provided, he conducts himself in a manner which suggests that he is much less competitive than Gates. However, it is important to remember that this may well be a skillfully cultivated perception rather than a reality.

What we have here are mini-biographies, albeit more substantial than "portraits," of five uncommon men, all of whom are distinguished by "their quest for social ubiquity, a sense of manifest destiny that is captured in America Online's corporate mantra, 'AOL Anywhere.' It's a poignant statement, not just of one company's voracious aims, but of the kinds of boundless goals that the networked economy now allows for." Thanks to Leibovich, we have in a single volume what will help us to understand "one of the most transforming and tumultuous eras in American history." Leibovich has rigorously examined where five of its greatest leaders came from and "what they've grown up to be"...at least so far.

Could not put it down!
This book offers great insights into the minds of todays business leaders. The diversity of this group is amazing and compelling reading. Each has a different style, beliefs, and background that have shaped their lives. I'm not a big reader, but I could not put this one down. Highly recommended.

Buy this book for insider's dope, not the management secrets
The author paints Gates as a self-taught technologist and social [incompetent]('hates touching people'), a monument to bad hygiene (a cocktail of bad breath, and infrequent bathing), and as a notoriously bad poker player. This surprised me. But Gate's college buddies insist he stubbornly played every loser hand he had in college. Ironically, not knowing when to fold them seems to have shadowed Gates in his business life (e.g. MSN, Microsoft TV, and DOJ).

The author paints Chambers as a bit of an enigma, a goody-two-shoes that is difficult for insiders to get close to. An always-on salesman, full of corny bromides, who is a shameless name-dropper too easily impressed by heads of states and politicians. The author reveals that Cisco insiders complain that Chambers is too nice to fault (can't pull the trigger on necessary lay-offs when times are tough), avoids conflict, and surrounds himself with too many loyal 'bozos' inside his senior executive circle. Perhaps most concerning to investors, the author discloses some concern among ex-execs (Listwin) and the current board (Morgridge) that Chambers is more interested in politics these days than actually running his company. Investors Note: Chamber's employment contract run thru January 2004. ... Read more

Book Description

"In [this] new book, Richard Coyne compares the relationship of various modern schools of philosophy to developments in information technology...giving the reader an introduction to the major areas of philosophical thought and information systems that puts many textbooks to shame." -- Architects Journal

Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age puts the theoretical discussion of computer systems and information technology on a new footing. Shifting the discourse from its usual rationalistic framework, Richard Coyne shows how the conception, development, and application of computer systems is challenged and enhanced by postmodern philosophical thought. He places particular emphasis on the theory of metaphor, showing how it has more to offer than notions of method and models appropriated from science. Coyne examines the entire range of contemporary philosophical thinking -- including logical positivism, analytic philosophy, pragmatism, phenomenology, critical theory, hermeneutics, and deconstruction -- comparing them and showing how they differ in their consequences for design and development issues in electronic communications, computer representation, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and multimedia. He also probes the claims made of information technology, including its presumptions of control, its so-called radicality, even its ability to make virtual worlds, and shows that many of these claims are poorly founded. Among the writings Coyne visits are works by Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, Gadamer, Derrida, Habermas, Rorty, and Foucault. He relates their views to information technology designers and critics such as Herbert Simon, Alan Kay, Terry Winograd, Hubert Dreyfus, and Joseph Weizenbaum. In particular, Coyne draws extensively from the writing of Martin Heidegger, who has presented one of the most radical critiques of technology to date. ... Read more

Book Description

“AOL had found itself at the edge of disaster so frequently that one of its first executives, a brassy Vietnam veteran and restaurateur named Jim Kimsey, had taken the punch line of an old joke popularized by Ronald Reagan and made it into an unlikely mantra for the company. It concerned a very optimistic young boy who happened upon a huge pile of horse manure and began digging excitedly. When someone asked him what he was doing covered in muck, the foolish boy answered brightly, ‘There must be a pony in here somewhere!’” —From the Prologue

If you’re wondering what happened after “a company without assets acquired a company without a clue,” as Kara Swisher wryly writes, it’s time to crack open this trenchant book about the doomed merger of America Online and Time Warner. On a quest to discover how the deal of the century became the messiest merger in history, Swisher delivers a rollicking narrative and a keen analysis of this debacle that is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what it all means for the digital future. Packed with new revelations and on-the-record interviews with key players, it is the first detailed examination of the merger’s aftermath and also looks forward to what is coming next.

It certainly has not been a pretty picture so far—with $100 billion in losses, a sinking stock price, employees in revolt, and lawsuits galore. As Swisher writes, “It is hard not to feel a bit queasy about the whole sorry mess. . . . It felt a bit like I was watching someone fall down a flight of stairs in slow motion, and every bump and thump made me wince. It made me reassess old ideas and wonder what I had gotten wrong. And it left me deeply confused as to what had happened and, more important, what was coming next.”

For Swisher, finding the answers to what went awry is important because she remains a staunch believer in the digital future—maybe not in the AOL Time Warner merger, but in the essential idea at the heart of it that someday the distinction of old and new media will no longer exist. Borrowing from Winston Churchill, Swisher calls it “the end of the beginning” of the digital revolution. “By that, I mean that it is from the ashes of this bust that the really important companies of the next era will emerge. And that evolution will, I believe, be shaped by what happened—and what is happening now—at AOL Time Warner.”

To figure it all out, Swisher takes her reader on a journey that begins with a portrait of two wildly different corporate cultures and businesses that somehow came to believe, in the crucible of the red-hot Internet era, that they could successfully join forces and achieve unprecedented growth and success. When the merger was announced in early 2000, the irresistible combination was hailed as the new paradigm and its executives—Steve Case, Jerry Levin, Bob Pittman—as popular icons of the future. But after the boom so spectacularly turned to bust and the visions of New Media Supremacy lay in ruins, Swisher searches for clues about where the merger went wrong and who is to blame.

More important, she looks to the future of both AOL Time Warner and the Internet as she seeks to answer the key question that the noise of the disaster has all but drowned out. Will the demise of the AOL Time Warner merger be the final and inevitable chapter of the dot-com debacle or will it herald a new paradigm altogether? This book, then, is a primer for the time to come, using the story of the AOL Time Warner merger as the vehicle to show the troubled journey into the future. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Crash of the Titans
Much of Kara Swisher's lively chronicle of the biggest media merger in history is focused on two visionary company leaders: AOL's Steve Case, who made the company into the 800-pound gorilla of cyberspace but could never seem to turn that power into genuine respect; and Time Warner's Gerald Levin, whose efforts to take the venerable media company into a Net-based future met with one failure after another (FSN, Pathfinder). In theory, the merger should have given both partners what they wanted. So what went wrong? Swisher counts the ways, from bad timing (the tech boom of the late 90's was already starting to wane when the merger was first announced) to tumultuous ego clashes between the "young turks" of AOL and the feudalistic "old school" hierarchy of Time Warner. And then, of course, there's the money. Swisher details AOL's "creative" accounting practices, Time Warner's less-than-diligent due diligence (possibly a product of Levin's determination to make the merger happen, no matter what), and the desire on both sides to create a "synergy" of old and new media, with no clear idea on how to make it happen. Synergy was AOL-Time Warner's Holy Grail, all-important but ever-elusive, and when the company failed to get it, the stock price tumbled. Swisher's prose style is accessible and informative. When she offers personal anecdotes or opinions, they are never intrusive or self-important; instead, they add dimension and context to the narrative, fleshing out the how-high-can-we-go? headiness of the late 1990's. My only complaints are minor ones. First, I wish the book contained a "cast list" of the major players for quick reference; when the surnames start flying around (Pittman, Parsons, Colburn, Crawford), it would have been nice to have a reminder of what positions each person held. Also, and this is no fault of Swisher's, the book went to press before the ideal ending could be included: the decision to drop AOL from the company name. (In fairness, Swisher did predict the name change would happen, and she expected it sooner rather than later. Perhaps the paperback edition will feature an extended coda.) When the merger was first announced, Ted Turner, a major stockholder and Warner board member, compared the experience to "that night when [he] first made love some forty-two years ago." By the end of There Must Be a Pony, readers may have much earthier metaphors in mind.

Wonderful, Easy to Read Perspective on AOL-Time Warner Deal
I would get this book prior to any trip...it is well-written with an irreverent, breezy style and an eye to the clever phrase or interesting anecdote. It is fun to read. The author, Kara Swisher, not only chronicles the AOL-Time Warner transaction but also provides interesting perspective on the late 90's and early 00's. One could ask why my comments and why this particular book? The book has value in that the author lived through this period, understood the genesis of the acquiring company, AOL, and importantly, was a keen observer of Time Warner (including its key players, Jerry Levin and Ted Turner among others) and the transaction that took place. To give you a sense of her style and perspective, she describes the merger as " a company without any assets acquiring a company without a clue."

What makes the book worthwhile is the author, her style and most importantly, the relationships she established with almost all of the main players. She had extraordinary access to them over time and they were comfortable enough with her to provide their own perspectives in something other than a self serving manner. There are no heroes only fools, some more gullible than others.

Buy it, you'll enjoy it and you will remember to look for Kara Swisher's by-line when you next read the Wall Street Journal.

A really dumb book
Probably one of the poorest written books I have ever attempted to read. The author repeats things over and over to gain word content, but says very little of substance.

Excellent account of the AOL - Time Warner merger.
This is a very good book on the AOL Time Warner merger. This merger is unusual, because it is the acquirer (AOL) that got weakened much more than the acquired (Time Warner). Also interesting, it is not so obvious why that was the case. Right after the merger, the AOL executives got the upper hand over the Time Warner ones. This was logical, and was a confirmation of who bought up whom. So, given that the AOL executives had the upper hand, and that AOL was doing great before the merger, what triggered the demise of the company post merger?

The author makes a well detailed and successful case that the unraveling of AOL was associated with the bitterness of the Time Warner executives as the result of not being treated as equals. As a result, they conducted a quiet mutiny by consciously underperforming on all the projects and ventures related to AOL. And, they succeeded marvelously.

The author also makes a case that AOL is not over. And, that it has still a bright future within the internet and technology domain. Here the author is on much thinner ice. Her case is more about subjectivity and personal likings than anything else.

Nevertheless, this book is overall an excellent and easy read. The author style is very lively and makes for a fast page turner. It is also very personal. She seems to know and meet everyone in the industry and have interesting personal opinions on them all. This renders the book so much more interesting then just an extended Harvard case study which so many books of this type end up becoming.

It's about more than just AOL
This is more than a page-turner about the ill fated deal. Ordinarily an objective reporter, Swisher gives her prescription for redeeming the consumer friendliness of the AOL Internet service -- abandoned by its management for deals: "advertising" and positioning deals with upstart dot coms needing IPO credibility; and the calculated megadeal of putting Time Warner's valuable "traditional" media assets under the dot com "bubble". Inadvertently, Swisher also makes another important point: believe what you read, but be skeptical about believing it as truth. Thanks to her superlative reporting for the Wall Street Journal out of Silicon Valley, the "street" (if not the public) understood the radical importance of the Internet, but lost its critical faculties about which players had real businesses. Concurrently, Time Inc.'s "Fortune" magazine also chronicled many newsworthy Internet stories. Too many must have believed the media hype, and regrettably, too many entrepreneurs crashed when reality set in. Swisher tells the AOL Time Warner story thoroughly and dramatically. Her book should be required reading in business schools. ... Read more

Amazon.com

The story of supercomputing is only partially about technology. More than anything, it's about the gifted, brilliant, and often eccentric individuals who knew how to use that technology in new ways to do amazing things. Perhaps the most amazing of the bunch was Seymour Cray, the bureaucracy-intolerant genius with the barnstorming mind whose name has become synonymous with supercomputers. Charles Murray gives us an insightful and often thrilling and sometimes amusing look into how Cray and his genius companions took computers to new heights and humbled companies like Control Data and IBM. ... Read more

Reviews (11)

IBM is Big , Cray is Speed ! Cray is like Tesla !
If you have no idea what super-computer is , this is the book that you have to read , after that you will know more than just IBM the next time someone mention about computer .

This book is both chronological and narrative and at the same time concise . It makes it easy for people who know nuts about computer or engineering to understand what went on in the computer industry when it was at an infant stage . Readers thus have a thorough understanding of the industry from its humble beginning to the present and how Seymour Cray and his engineers had contributed to the industry .To put it simply , without Cray Super Computing might have taken a longer time to emerge. This book also reveals the rivalry that went on at Cray Research that eventually led to a split in the company . You will be surprised to find that bringing out a new product takes much more than just a technological break-through.If it is that simple Cray would have beaten IBM many times.

At the end , one would find Cray a rare genius who given the opportunity would have done much better .Unfortunately the circumstances he was in and his sole interest in engineering alone has limited his success . To me Seymour Cray is over and above Bill Gates and Tom Watson although he was much poorer than these two in the financial aspect . Like Nicholas Tesla , Cray was a better engineer than all his contemporaries but was bestowed with the least honours.To Cray , I salute you !

A Fascinating Read about Super Computing
By far, this book is a must read for any computer enthusiast. From the early days of drum hard drives through nuclear explosion modeling, The Supermen will captivate your mind and force your eyes to read more. From Seymour Cray's early days at Control Data through Cray Reasearch's end, you will experience firsthand the methodical and torturous mind of "god." In the end, you will walk away inspired and deeply impressed by one man's desire to think clealy, methodically and free from corporate intrusion. This book serves as a real primer to understanding today's computer industry.

just wonderful!
This is just one of the best books I have ever read! The historic point of view is awesome!

;-)

No one beats Seymour Cray
Seymour Cray carves a special place in the history of computing. No other super computing companies / personalities can rival his achievement (name one that survives more than 3 decades). This book chronicles the life and time of Seymour Cray. It depicts how one man's devotion to attain the highest speed in computing produces a series of remarkable machine. Anyone would wish that the guy is still around building newer machines.

Moving Story of Seymour Cray's Passion
Few biographies of computer heavyweights have moved me like this short, 232-page volume. This book is a nicely written chronicle of Seymour Cray and his supercomputing associates. The book covers Cray's entire professional career - from Cray's early days with pioneering Engineering Research Associates until his death (from injuries in an auto accident) in 1996 as he struggled to reinvent the glory days of super-computing with a new company, SRC (Seymour Roger Cray) Computers.

By the way, as a native of Minnesota and Wisconsin, it was pleasant to recall that Control Data and Cray Computing made the area around St. Paul (Wisconsin is just across the river) one of the hottest technology areas for two decades.

Cray was totally absorbed in computing. If you share some of his passion, you will love this. Non-tech types will not enjoy it and will wonder why he did not "get a life." ... Read more

Book Description

The 1990s was one of the most dynamic eras in American business history. Technology was advancing at such a rapid pace, with such widespread growth, and with such giddy enthusiasm from investors, that it seemed too good to last. It was.

Media insider John Motavalli gives a vivid account from the front lines of the compelling drama that developed in the media industry during this time, as old-world, advertising-driven companies thought they'd found a new world to dominate. But it led to some rather colossal failures. Time Warner's FSN was a multibillion-dollar interactive cable disaster and its sequel, the Web-based Pathfinder, was even more embarrasing. Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and the New York Times Company also stumbled. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg: this struggle is one of the great business follies of our time and continued until January 2000, when AOL swallowed up Time Warner, a first-of-its-kind marriage of new and old.

Fast paced and exciting, Bamboozled at the Revolution reveals a period of wonderful excess and is sure to join Barbarians at the Gate, Burn Rate, and, more recently, The New New Thing as the definitive portraits of unique eras in business. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Jumping the Gun?
Indeed, it is a well written book with excellent first hand accounts from the inside of the media giants during their flailings.

The book rightfully focuses on Time Warner's role in this and does a fair job of covering the other giants. Keep in mind too, this is not a book about the "dot com bust". It is about the media giant's inability to find a viable online role.

Is it maybe jumping the gun in some of it's conclusions? Particularly in regards to AOLTW? You'll have to read it and decide.

I think the book is a little unfair in one respect. While it accurately chronicals the media giants shortsightedness and sometimes incompetence in dealing with the online world. To me the one glaring omission from the book is the fact that it wasn't just big media who's lost billions in the battle for the internet, and in fact...the war may not be won. That's never really acknowledged and in fact with some of the final summations on AOLTW...the author may be jumping the gun.

Still, if you are at all interested in the "Big Media" the book does an excellent job of covering ALL the big media. Cable, broadcast, news/wire services, publishing (magazine and newspaper), recording industry. Nothing is left out. That's for sure.

wonderful, well written book
charming book, Motavalli can turn a phrase ... Read more

Book Description

For an extraordinary fifty-seven-year period, one of the nation's largest and fastest-growing companies was run by two men who were flesh and blood. The chief executives of the International Business Machines Corporation from 1914 until 1971 were Thomas J. Watson and Thomas J. Watson, father and son. That great corporation bears the imprint of both men -- their ambitions and their strengths -- but it also bears the consequences of a family that was in near-constant conflict.

Sometimes wrong but never in doubt, both Watsons had clear -- and farsighted -- visions of what their company could become. They also had volcanic tempers. Their fights with each other combined with their commitment to leadership and excellence made IBM one of the most rewarding, yet gut-clutching firms to work for in the history of American business.

We are accustomed to describing professional behavior as if men and women leave their emotions and vulnerabilities at home each day. In the case of the Watsons, filial and sibling strife could not be excluded from the office. In closely studying the desires and frustrations of the Watson family, eminent historian Richard S. Tedlow has produced something more than a family portrait or a company history. He has raised the nearly forbidden issue of the role of emotion in corporate life.

This book explores the interplay between the person- alities of these two extraordinary men and the firm they created. Both Watsons had deeply held beliefs about what a corporation is and should be. These ideas helped make "Big Blue" the bluest of blue-chip stocks during the Watsons' tenure. These very beliefs, however, also sowed the seeds for IBM's disasters in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the company had lost sight of the original meaning behind many of the practices each man put into place.

Tracing the family's idiosyncratic ability to cope with each other's weaknesses but not their strengths, The Watson Dynasty is a book for every person who ever went to work but didn't want to check his personality at the door.

Reviews (2)

Two Men of Men
Those who have read Tedlow's Giants of Enterprise are already aware of his unique and abundant skills as a brilliant thinker and eloquent writer. In this volume, he focuses his attention on Thomas Watson Sr. and Jr. who established and then developed one of the great dynasties in modern business history. (Watson Sr. was among seven "Giants" Tedlow discussed in his previous book.) This volume consists of several separate but carefully integrated parts: Watson Sr.'s life and career, his son Tom's life and career, and their often volatile personal as well as professional relationship at IBM.

Of special interest to me is Watson Sr.'s career with the National Cash Register company during which he observed first-hand the leadership and management style of its founder and CEO, John Henry Patterson. Tedlow suggests that Watson Sr. learned many lessons from Patterson which later proved invaluable when, after being asked to resign his position at NCR, Watson accepted an offer to head the Computing-Tabulating-Recording company, renamed the International Business Machines Corporation in 1924. By then, Watson had demonstrated his genius as a salesman. "It was, however, his very appreciation of selling that prompted his constant push for better products and his support of engineers and the interest risks of research and development....What made Watson great was his understanding that in order for marketing to succeed, the marketers needed a product to sell which the market would accept....Selling was the art of helping the customer to understand that he did indeed both need and want what you were selling to him." Tedlow leaves no doubt that Watson's years at NCR fully prepared him to thrive as CEO of IBM, choosing the right product to bet on, taking full advantage of any and all opportunities to sell it, and -- meanwhile -- building a culture in which ever-increasing sales and profits were driven by technical superiority and a total commitment to serving each customer's needs.

Also of interest to me is the relationship between the two Thomas Watsons. Theirs was a love-hate relationship, to be sure. Thomas Watson Sr. ran IBM for 42 years and one week, from May 1, 1914, until May 8, 1956. Throughout that period, father and son frequently had "hellacious" arguments. According to Watson Jr., their fights were "savage, primal, and unstoppable" and yet, as Tedlow explains, they deeply loved and greatly respected each other. Following Watson Sr.'s death, he was proclaimed the "World's Greatest Salesman" in a front-page New York Times headline. Watson Jr. was devastated, so much so that he took several months off to cope with his grief. He then returned to his duties as CEO and proceeded to transform IBM into what was then, by all accounts, the world's best managed corporation.

A brief commentary such as this simply cannot do full justice to what Tedlow achieves in this volume. Suffice to say that he draws upon a wealth of historical and biographical information to reveal and explain the full significance of two great corporate leaders, to be sure, but also to reveal and explain them in compelling human terms, warts and all. Eventually, Tedlow observes, IBM encountered in the 1990s, a near-death experience. "The problem with IBM was not Watson principles and practices. It was that those principles and practices had ossified. Rather than being living, breathing, flexible guidelines within which creative people could work and be playful at their work, they had degenerated into mere words which had lost their meaning. They were only limiting, never liberating. The shadow [of the Watsons] remained; the substance had disappeared." Thomas J. Watson Jr. died on December 31, 1993. Then CEO Lou Gerstner was the first successor to Watson Jr. who would not have him looking over his shoulder. On Gerstner's watch, IBM survived its near-death experience and is now led by Samuel J. Palmisano, an executive who has spent his entire career at IBM. To say that IBM has returned to its roots is to say that IBM has re-established itself in alignment with the principles and practices of a two visionary leaders named Watson.

A good bio on the father and son that founded IBM
If you are interested in the lives of the father and son that built IBM, this book is a pretty good place to start. It is an interpretive essay rather than an academic or formal biography. Since the author is basing this book on secondary sources, he carefully lists all the sources he relied on to write this book, He doesn't claim to provide original research or to have had access to primary sources that aren't publicly available. But it is good for a quick read and introduction to the Thomas Watson Sr and Jr.

Since business is done by actual human beings, I enjoy peeling back the corporate veneer and the impersonal language of saying the company did this or that and looking at the real people and what they did with a touch of why they made their choices if such evidence is available. Not for the soap opera or supposition of it, but to learn real lessons about the character, the luck, the blunders, the brilliance that makes up all of the stories of history. One of the phony things corporations do in misusing the language is to say things like ABC Giantcorp made the decision to do XYZ. Actually, the men and women who run the organization made that decision. The Watsons both knew this and were, by today's standards, surprisingly human (if hard driving).

Watson Sr. was a special character who came out of that early period of the first vast American corporations. He learned the right lessons and had the right traits. He found the right opportunity in building what he turned into IBM. Watson Jr. turned into a special character partly from the training from his father, but more by his experiences in WWII. But like a great many families of men of vast ambition and ability, the family of Watson Sr. did not get all the benefits of wealth and experience without cost. There was a lot to live up to and, for the most part, they met their responsibilities (with some all-too-normal failings). All in all, the author tells a cautionary tale.

The book is well documented. There is a list of the sources used for each chapter, a bibliographical essay with a good list of the sources you can use for more reading on the Watsons an IBM and a good index.

I will say that the author's informal writing style, especially when he flips into the first person, can be disorienting. Yes, he has a breezy style that reads like a class lecture sounds, but at times it caused me to stop and have to parse the language to figure out exactly whom he was talking about and what he was saying. There were a couple of times that I had to make surmises and am still not absolutely sure that the meaning I finally took away was what the author intended.

But it is really a pretty good and valuable book. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Very easy to read and insightful on how Intel works
This book is a very easy to read and insightful description of how products innovate at Intel. The book also conveys accurately the Intel Value and culture that the Intel employees experience everyday at their work. This book is an excellent source of info on how Intel really works ... Read more

Amazon.com

Sun Microsystems is the type of company that most new startups hope to become: massively profitable, astoundingly innovative, and supremely adaptable. But as Karen Southwick's engaging narrative High Noon makes clear, there were many bumps along the road to Sun's $25 billion market valuation. In fact, when Sun started out in the early '80s as a spinoff of the Stanford University Network (SUN), there was barely a road at all.

It's hard to remember a time when there wasn't a computer on every desktop, but in 1981, engineers had to stand in line to use their company's mainframes. Sun's business strategy was to sell a desktop workstation for each employee who needed a computer. On top of that, Sun allowed those workstations to exchange data via an intracompany network, and used graphical interfaces to make them easier to navigate. Standard stuff now, but a radical series of concepts back then, and it was inevitable that Sun would clash with Microsoft. Sun CEO Scott McNealy's enmity for the software colossus is well-known--he was a key player in the U.S. government's antitrust action against Microsoft in the late 1990s--and it temporarily scattered the company's focus, leading to a major reorganization.

The conclusion to the Sun story is, of course, unknown. Southwick ends her book with a peek into the future, speculating on what will become of promising computer languages like Java and Jini. But it seems like it'll be a long time before Sun sets. --Lou Schuler ... Read more

Reviews (17)

Insider¿s view of Sun Microsystems & Scott McNealy
High Noon reveals the inside story of a world-class IT company. It provides an insider's view at the business strategies of Sun Microsystems and its gutsy leader, CEO Scott McNealy. Sun Microsystems (creators of the Java programming language) is now in a position to challenge high-tech's most powerful players over the future of computing. This is due in large part to its practical, ambitious, and forward-looking CEO.

High Noon is a thorough case study of this successful company, from its birth as the brainchild of Indian immigrant Vinod Khosla in 1982, through its rise under McNealy's brash and unconventional methods, to its current battle with Microsoft, which will undoubtedly change the landscape of the computer industry. This entertaining and instructive book reveals the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of McNealy and Sun, with candid interviews from the key players that provide insight into the inner workings of the high-tech industry.

High Noon will appeal to managers interested in applying Sun's innovative tactics to their own companies, as well as anyone intrigued by the compelling success story of this unique Silicon Valley company.

Karen Southwick of San Francisco, California has been writing about technology and Silicon Valley for more than a decade, first with San Francisco Chronicle, then Upside magazine and most recently, Forbes ASAP. She also authored Silicon Gold Rush.

Good, just very dated
After recently taking on some professional responsibility for a large Solaris farm after a long hiatus (about a decade) from Sun technology, I thought this might catch me up with the company and products. It did provide some good info, but this work is over four years old, an eternity in technology. It certainly did not reflect Sun's rapid decline in market cap and Linux debacles, both of which landed it on the front page of the WSJ a few weeks ago.

I might have rated this four stars a few years ago. The only qualms are that the author should have presumed a more technical, computer-literate audience, and the audio quality was inferior (I listened to the unabridged Audible version).

Well researched and written, useful.
Unlike most books of the high-tech, hero-worship genre, these authors actually did their homework and then wrote an intelligent, well organized history of Sun Microsystems and Scott McNealy. Given the multiple transformations that Sun has gone through (workstations, chip design, software design, servers, memory systems, enterprise hardware and software, and Java), as well as its famous feud with Microsoft and Mister Bill, that is no easy task, but they provide a succinct (225 page) and unbiased view that will be of interest to anyone who is interested in learning more about these subjects. The endnotes are particularly helpful.

Although the authors were not able to interview McNealy (he turned down their request), they do include intelligent observations about him and Sun from knowledgeable persons both within and outside Sun. Given the shallowness of McNealy's public comments and statements in other interviews to date (one suspects that he is finally learning to put a governor on his mouth), the omission is not noticeable.

It is rumored that Ms. Southwick is in the process of preparing a similar volume about Oracle and Larry Ellison. If so, it will be a welcome improvement over the swill (e.g., "The Oracle of Oracle" by Florence Stone) that has been published about them to date.

Needed more information about Sun the company
While I harbor no great love for Microsoft, I have even less for people who whine about a problem when they should be working on a solution. In my opinion, Scott McNealy is in that category. His constant verbal bashing of Microsoft detracts from what should be a positive message of Sun's advances in technology. Java, the crown jewel of software development at Sun, is a sound technical achievement. No one can examine the technical specifications of C#, the language developed at Microsoft, and not recognize its' Java "roots." In this book you learn about McNealy and I was gratified to learn that there are people at Sun who are just as frustrated at his "first whiner" tactics.
While Southwick goes to great lengths to maintain an even-handed approach, there is still a clear, although slight bias towards Sun. However, it does not detract from the quality. In my opinion, what lessened the value of the book was the emphasis on the personality of McNealy rather than that of Sun. As a major technology company, it is far more interesting than its' talkative CEO. From my perspective, Sun chief scientist Bill Joy is a more interesting personality than McNealy. A superlative, extrapolative thinker, Joy is someone to be listened to.
The complex interactions between Sun, IBM, HP, Oracle and Microsoft is one of the most fascinating events of our time. Simultaneously competitors as well as cooperators, how they move together dictates the rate of technical progress. This means far more to me than a series of negative comments about Bill and his group. Therefore, more ink should have been spent describing how these companies interact.

Don't Bother
I purchased this book thinking it would provide a detailed insight into the business strategies of Sun and how Scott McNealy thinks business. As it turns out McNealey was never even interviewed for this book. It is filled with nothing but second hand accounts of the things McNealey did as told by people who worked for him years ago. The book has a logical order to the chapters but each chapter, chronologically, jumps all over the place. The author interviews everyone from Mcnealey's right hand man to the cleaning people and a variety of other folks that the reader does not care about. It is as if the author started cold calling people in Silicone Valley and if they ever worked for Sun she would interview them. I would not waste money on this book. ... Read more

Book Description

In this bestselling work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner George Anders presents a behind-the-scenes account of a struggle that rocked Wall Street and stunned the computer industry.

When Carly Fiorina took command of Hewlett-Packard in 1999, she was venturing further than any woman previously had into traditional men’s territory. Leading the opposition against her daring plan to rescue the $40 billion-dollar company from decline—which included the $20 billion acquisition of archrival Compaq—was Walter Hewlett, son of HP’s late co-founder and defender of "The HP Way."Not since Wall Street operatives battled over the fate of RJR Nabisco had a takeover drama so captivated the media and the public.

Drawing on unparalleled access to HP insiders and written with a novelist’s flair, Perfect Enough is a spellbinding chronicle of hope, ambition, betrayal, and family pride. ... Read more

Reviews (20)

An HP CEO not focused on HP business
This book falls into an interesting category, those books that are irresponsible by omission. George Anders' primary irresponsibility was his failure to point out that Carly Fiorina has never been focused on solving key HP business problems. This was clear in the Compaq merger debate this book reviews where she failed to answer the issues that Walter Hewlett and other critics raised in a substantive way.

It is even more true today -- it is clear from her recent activities that Carly Fiorina has essentially given up on HP and HP business problems and instead is focusing completely on personal interests. In reviewing the topics of her last 10 business speeches, only one (her Oracleworld keynote) promotes HP business interests. The other 90% focus on a variety of personal interests - her desire to be viewed as a great humanitarian, gender celebrations, etc. At the very minimum, HP shareholders, who have suffered a loss of 49% in the value of their shares during the Fiorina administration, deserve to have her focus her efforts on HP business. Surely this huge investment of her time in marketing herself as a great humanitarian etc can wait until she leaves HP. It only demeans HP to have a CEO (who HP has paid over 100 million dollars in cash, stocks and options) cost its shareholders 49% plus the time value of money of their investment and add insult to injury by public demonstrating to all her lack of interest in her job.

Anders' book could have been a valuable contribution if it had simply emphasized Fiorina's lack of interest in the true duties of her job.

Book overlooked Fiorina's poor performance
This book, unfortunately, did not have real coverage in the two areas that I regard as most important: quality of sales and marketing execution and wisdom of business investment decisions. When any CEO steps into a position like the one Fiorina did, what investors most want is the highest quality marketing and sales of existing products and the best business judgement available concerning future investments. Anders' famously tells us what the HP Board had for lunch one day but failed to provide insight into these two key areas.

There were major failures in both areas that Anders could have warned us about. For example, HP has fallen from number 3 when Carly took over to number 6 in the digital camera market. It was critical to move from number 3 to at least number 2 in this market in order to have a good business here and instead we find she fell to a pathetic and unsustainable number 6. Her VP responsible for this disaster still has his job, apparently with an office near a beach in San Diego. Before Carly, when this general area was a wildly successful one for HP, a previous HP VP lived close to the key HP imaging site in Boise, Idaho. Anders could have warned us this was failing and why.

I was also very disappointed that Anders did not warn us about the poor new business investment decisions being made Fiorina aside from Compaq. Heavy investments in "digital entertainment" may provide Carly with an excuse for her hobnobing with Hollywood and music industry people but is unlikely to yield much in the way of profit. About the time he retired Jack Welch (former CEO of GE) mentioned that he had never met Carly. I doubt she has much time for people like Welch that were in the position to buy billions of dollars of HP products because she spends so much time with people that are unlikely to buy anything including Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Sheryl Crow, Oprah Winfrey, Ben Affleck, the Sopranos etc. There does not appear to be a real business agenda here -- it seems social in nature. This obvious perspective should have been noted in Anders' book. Surely the fact that Carly Fiorina has taken her eye off the ball at HP, and this has been going on for many years, deserves to be at least duly noted.

Sympathetic but insightful
There are two sides to every merger and in the case of Hewlett Packard and Compaq Computer, the competing sides weren't just the companies. They include the historians documenting it.

For Perfect Enough, George Anders gained access to HP CEO Carly Fiorina and her fellow board members and executives. It provides a full picture of the genesis of the computing deal. Explaining the frustration board members felt at the company's inability to keep up with competitors benefiting from the Internet boom such as Dell Computer Corp. or release a killer new product since the laser printer in the early 1980s, Anders stresses that the board members - and not just Fiorina- were seeking a radical makeover for HP.

Peter Burrows' competing book about the merger, Backfire, paints Carly Fiorina as a brilliant marketer and communicator who stumbled into HP after one of the worst executive search jobs of all time by Christian Timbers. Her first two years was good idea after good idea followed by poor execution after poorer execution. The Business Week journalist implies the Compaq merger was primarily a way to deflect attention away from her inability to turn the company around after her first two years there.

Anders' more sympathetic account is fascinating at times such as its description of the complex relationship between Fiorina and David Packard's daughter Susan Packard-Orr. But, Burrows' book - unencumbered by any sense of loyalty to Fiorina, who snubbed the author - digs deeper into Fiorina's past by interviewing her ex-husband and childhood friends, thereby providing a much fuller picture of the executive, if not the entire organization.

Taken together, the two books complement each other nicely. It remains to be seen if the same can be said for the merger.

Seems a fair enough assessment of the situation
I came to HP as a result of the Compaq merger. This book provides a lot of insight into why HP does things the way it does, and from where I sit provides a much more balanced assessment of the merger than does the other book on the market. I use the information gained from the book in my dealings with the very much "blue" organizations that still exist within the company.

This is still a hidebound company, and the good ol' boys that have been around can't deal with the concept of a strong female leader. And there are still too many employees wearing blinders which say "Bill and Dave's way or the highway." Well, Bill and Dave brought an absolutely staggering amount of over-design into the company, and while that may have worked in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, it gets in the way in today's marketplace more often than not. Kudos to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anders for not bowing to the pressure from the GOBs and telling it like it is.

And to the 21+ people who recommended Bill and Dave's Excellent Adventure over this book - it's time to move on, folks. They did many wonderful things - but Bill and Dave's time has passed.

B