<story><title>Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC</title><url>https://every.to/the-crazy-ones/the-misfit-who-built-the-ibm-pc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phkahler</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; His divisional heads always had the same answer. Microcomputers—home computing—were a fad. They were low-cost and low-profit. Let others scrabble around in the metaphorical dirt of home computing. The real money was in the markets that IBM’s divisions already dominated—selling vast mainframes and minicomputer systems to large businesses. Cary was even told to buy Atari, which by then had established itself as America’s home video game system of choice. That’s all home computers were good for: gaming.&lt;p&gt;This attitude was so short sighted. A friend of mines dad was using their Apple II for work-related spreadsheets and thought it was the greatest this ever. Not sure how IBM folks could not see this opportunity just because it was smaller scale than &amp;quot;what they did&amp;quot;. 20 years later Intel seemed to have missed the mobile market due to a similar attitude.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dkarl</author><text>None of those division heads were trying to honestly assess the microcomputer market. They were trying to stay in harmony with opinion at their level and higher in IBM.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what you get at that level in a company that big. Anyone who is two or more levels from the top of the org chart and also two or more levels from the bottom lives in a reality that consists entirely of the attitudes and opinions of other people, weighted by each person&amp;#x27;s ability to impact their career. If they saw that the building they were in was on fire, their thought process would go something like: &amp;quot;Bob isn&amp;#x27;t here today because he&amp;#x27;s at that sales meeting. When he hears about the fire he&amp;#x27;ll downplay it as something minor, so I shouldn&amp;#x27;t evacuate or he&amp;#x27;ll think less of me. But Bob&amp;#x27;s boss Don is here. If Don evacuates and I don&amp;#x27;t, that might Don feel embarrassed and emasculated, and he&amp;#x27;ll take it out on Bob. So I need to evacuate if and only if Don evacuates. Bob won&amp;#x27;t mind me evacuating if Don does it. But Don&amp;#x27;s office is on the other side of that wall of approaching flames. Shit. My only chance is if he&amp;#x27;s in a meeting on this side of the building, so I can track him down and see what he&amp;#x27;s doing. Let me check his calendar real quick....&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Don Estridge: A misfit who built the IBM PC</title><url>https://every.to/the-crazy-ones/the-misfit-who-built-the-ibm-pc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phkahler</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; His divisional heads always had the same answer. Microcomputers—home computing—were a fad. They were low-cost and low-profit. Let others scrabble around in the metaphorical dirt of home computing. The real money was in the markets that IBM’s divisions already dominated—selling vast mainframes and minicomputer systems to large businesses. Cary was even told to buy Atari, which by then had established itself as America’s home video game system of choice. That’s all home computers were good for: gaming.&lt;p&gt;This attitude was so short sighted. A friend of mines dad was using their Apple II for work-related spreadsheets and thought it was the greatest this ever. Not sure how IBM folks could not see this opportunity just because it was smaller scale than &amp;quot;what they did&amp;quot;. 20 years later Intel seemed to have missed the mobile market due to a similar attitude.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LaundroMat</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s close to what Clayton Christensen describes as disruptive innovation (his examples were the steel industry and radio&amp;#x27;s): incumbents are forced higher up the chain by low quality competitors (&amp;quot;home computers are only good for gaming&amp;quot;) that answer an unanswered need well enough.
Once these competitors gain a foothold, quality improves and incumbents have less and less of a market.</text></comment>