In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition
In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition
In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition is National Lampoon meets Peter Drucker. It’s a funny and well-written business book that takes a look at some of the most influential marketing and business philosophies of the last twenty years. Through the dark glass of hindsight, it provides an educational and entertaining look at why these philosophies didn’t work for many of the country’s largest and best-known high-tech companies.
Marketing wizard Richard Chapman takes you on a hilarious ride in this book, which is richly illustrated with cartoons and reproductions of many of the actual campaigns used at the time. Filled with personal anecdotes spanning Chapman’s remarkable career (he was present at many now-famous meetings and events), In Search of Stupidity, Second Edition examines the best of the worst marketing ideas and business decisions in the last twenty years of the technology industry.
The second edition includes new chapters on Google and on how to avoid stupidity, plus the extensive analyses of all chapters from the first edition. Youll want to get a copy because it
- Features an interesting preface and interview with Joel Spolsky of “Joel on Software”
- Offers practical advice on avoiding PR disaster
- Features actual pictures of some of the worst PR and marketing material ever created
- Is highly readable and funny
- Includes theme-based cartoons for every chapter
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars How not to run a company
This book is a review of IT screw-ups from the late 70’s up til the early 2000’s. The author looks at a number of failed companies, some of which he worked for, and analyzes why they went out of business. As you might guess from the title this is done sardonically.
Here’s a sample of some of the snafu -
Overpricing product: CPM, OS2
Alienating 3rd party vendors: dBase
Releasing two products that do the same thing: Word Star vs WordStar 2000
Not giving the users what they want: Netware (No GUI).
Re-coding from scratch when you don’t have to: Netscape
Not admitting when your product flat out doesn’t work: Intel pentium’s math problems
Pros -
It’s a fun read.
It’s really interesting to learn what went on behind the scenes at some of these places.
There are some valuable lessons in here. If you work in IT it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep these companies in mind and try to avoid their mistakes.
Cons - Some of these cases are a little dated. If you aren’t interested in hearing about consumer IT in the 1980’s you might not dig this. Also, sometimes the author tries too hard to make a joke.
5 Stars Marketing & Industry History for Programmers
A great book to teach programmers about product marketing and a lot of fun history about the software industry.
5 Stars Enlightening and Entertaining
Chapman is a great writer, and he really brings to life (in an amusing way) the foibles that were made by the key players on the road to high-tech. The huge blunder made by Digital Research, Atari, IBM, et al., are put in their historical context as cautionary tales, and some myths are rebutted.
Depressingly, this also reminds us that it is not always the best and brightest that survive and thrive: witness the death of CP/M and the Dvorak keyboard, versus the rise of Microsoft and QWERTY, for example.
There is another note of caution sounded here, and that is to beware of fads. Problem is, at the time, it would take a pretty sober and objective mind to resist, let alone identify them as such. Back then it was “In Search of Excellence,” which was, as we now know, made of fake data; today, we have global warming and so on.
As an aside, the tales here also prove that the course of history is determined not by accidents of resources and geography a al Jared Diamond but rather by unpredictable decisions made by key players. To think otherwise is to ignore the main driving force of the human experiment, the human mind - unfortunately, one that cannot be explained by materialism, but the elephant in the room nevertheless.
5 Stars If you are in Tech, you should read this book!
There are lessons to be learned from those that have gone before us. This book is full of such lessons. I strongly suggest this book to anyone in tech simply to avoid the same stupid mistakes others have already made and learned from.
This book not only has information to impart. It is actually a fun, interesting read.
5 Stars Fast, lively, and well-written- like a master storyteller doing I.T.
This book, IMO, is written like a Porsche is built: fast, fun, and nimble. Though I picked it up because of its subject matter (computers, software), I also enjoyed it for a second reason: the quality of the writing.
Apparently, the author’s career is not as a writer, but you’d never tell it from how well this book is written- humor, irony, and descriptiveness are wound artfully through most of his descriptions.
Take, for example, this passage, where he’s discussing the marketing of the Ford Mustang vs. the Ford Falcon- to illustrate how IBM’s mistakes with the PC Jr. shared some things in common with Ford’s mistakes with the Falcon:
“Mustangs were fun, sexy, and desirable. Mustang owners were intelligent and cool people with a great sense of value, the type of folks you wished would invite you to a barbecue at their place. Of course, the Mustang, also wouldn’t go very fast (though it looked like it could), got good gas mileage, and was very economical to run. This is because it was, underneath its alluring sheet metal, nothing more than a reskinned Ford Falcon. But by dint of good design, … the Mustang became a car you could aspire to, whereas the Falcon was just a cheap set of wheels.”
That’s a lot more interesting to read, IMO, than most high-tech history books, or marketing manuals.
Yet, the author wraps in lots of value in those areas, as well. The book is filled with history, in a level of detail that only an insider (which he was) could know, and marketing insight, with a nuts-and-bolts examination that makes sense out of large & complicated industry situations.
I’ve really enjoyed reading, and dipping back into, this book. I almost never open up books after I’ve read them, but this one is an exception. I find myself keeping it around where I can get to it easily- and reading excerpts just for the fun of it. IMO, this guy’s writing is great.
Perhaps that’s why this book reminds me of a Porsche: it’s valuable, it’s well-designed, but better yet, you find yourself having fun while you’re also getting someplace.
Filed under: Making Money on the Internet Book Reviews