[TUHS] Why did PDPs become so popular?

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Fri Dec 29 00:05:51 AEST 2017


    > From: Paul Winalski

    > Lack of marketing skill eventually caught up to DEC by the late 1980s
    > and was a principal reason for its downfall.

I got the impression that fundamentally, DEC's engineering 'corporate culture'
was the biggest problem; it wasn't suited to the commodity world of computing,
and it couldn't change fast enough. (DEC had always provided very well built
gear, lots of engineering documentation, etc, etc.)

I dunno, maybe my perception is wrong? There's a book about DEC's failure:

  Edgar H. Schein, "DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC", Berett-Koehler, San
	  Francisco, 2003

which probably has some good thoughts. Also:

  Clayton M. Christensen, "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies
	  Cause Great Firms to Fail", Harvard Business School, Boston, 1997

briefly mentions DEC.

	Noel



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