Book Review: Dealers of Lightning - Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age

The book is indeed a very interesting revelation of the happenings that cannot be called anything less than a beginning of an era; an era of computer age, an era of technological leadership. One of the interesting points about the book is that it can be looked at from different perspectives, like of Product Development and Organization Behavior. The book gives excellent insights into the journey of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) from the late 1960s to early 1980s. The book gives many perspectives to the modern day product strategy and development. What is not known to many people is that things like Ethernet, Laser Printer, Graphical User Interfaces, word editors that are so much taken for granted in today’s computing world have their roots associated with PARC in the decade of 1970. The book is a wonderful read and is highly recommended for people who can appreciate the innovation, product development and organization behavior in the computing industry.

My thoughts on the intrapreneurial pursuits in an organization are as follows:

Riding on the success of one business can make the companies oblivious to the changing business trends. That emphasizes the importance of process of following intrapreneurial pursuits. R & D as typically called, is research AND development. Companies pursuing one at the expense of the other will often find themselves in precarious positions. Executives need to understand that both of them require different skill-sets, different ways of managing teams. People are also different in both the functions, so that is where the organization culture plays a key role. The culture should encourage the people to develop the products that can be commercialized without stifling the innovation. The innovation needs to be at different levels, the product innovation, process innovation and the management innovation. Misaligned incentive mechanisms often come across as the silent culprit in the failure of many products and that is where the role of modern day managers comes into picture to arrest this trend. Research requires lot of freedom and that is where it is imperative for organizations to tread the fine balance between independence and alignment of research to business interests of the organizations. 

The vision for the product is of paramount importance to take the products to their next level. It is required to envision the next generation of the product when the current one is in market itself. The truly inspiring products are made by people; so the importance of building the great teams cannot be undermined. 

While it is good to build products for the future, the question is how much one needs to look forward. On one extreme, product planners envision the products much ahead of time, thereby getting disconnected from the end-user of contemporary times; at the same time many of them believe in designing a better mouse-trap as an innovation. The answer clearly lies between the two, positioned more towards the former.