Monopolies
Rich,
After sending that last note, I realized that
I should correct one point:
RC> The customers call the shots.
JS> Absolutely!
The correction is "yes, but..." and the biggest but
(which Peirce noticed, by the way) is "except in the
case of a monopoly." I remember Lily Tomlin's skit
as a telephone operator back in the olden days before
ATT was broken up. It was a classic impression of
customer service from a monopoly.
Right now, the biggest, baddest monopoly is Microsoft,
but I very well remember the 30 years I spent at the
old monopoly. IBM in those days was a great place
for the employees, since the profit margins were so
high that nobody clamped down too hard on little
frills like research on conceptual graphs or writing
books and papers that didn't have clear business cases.
As long as you met the basic requirements on time,
they cut a lot of slack.
For similar reasons, Bell Labs was a great place for
innovative R & D for things that never made ATT much
direct profit -- transistors and Unix, for example.
But those things did a lot for the overall industry.
Yet if you compare the innovation and price decreases
in the telephone industry in the past 20+ years
(since the breakup of ATT) to the 20 years before
the breakup, the difference is amazing. Unfortunately,
Bell Labs ain't what it used to be.
I could see the same kinds of things happening in IBM,
which had an incredible amount of innovative R & D,
but most of it never got out the door. One example
is GML, which IBM did release as a product for the
mainframes, but they killed a very nice version for
the PC. Charlie Goldfarb, who represents the G in
GML, got a version of GML standardized as SGML, but
he left IBM because he couldn't get a product out
of it. Instead, a couple of guys in a garage at
CERN popularized a subset called HTML, and the rest
is history.
Worst of all, some of the best developments were
killed because they were "counterstrategic". There
was an informal IBM jargon dictionary, to which I
contributed the following two definitions:
counterstrategic adj. Embarrassingly superior
to what is strategic.
strategic adj. Supported by managers who have
reached their level of incompetence.
Mike Cowlishaw, who edited that dictionary for many
years, added my two definitions. Unfortunately, his
manager suggested that he delete them. Following
are the definitions from the 10th edition (1990):
counter-strategic 1. adj. Not the official policy.
Applied to suggestions that one would like to ignore.
“Not the basket in which IBM has placed its eggs.”
2. adj. Not the published official policy. That is,
causing embarrassment to those who are responsible
for what is strategic. (q.v.)
strategic adj. Used to designate a major IBM product,
to which IBM is prepared to commit significant
resources. A project manager will do anything to
get his or her product classified “strategic”.
Only the word "embarrassment" reflects my definitions,
but in a greatly watered-down version.
After IBM handed its monopoly to Billg on a silver
platter, they went through a near-death experience,
from which they emerged as a leaner and more nimble
company. (That's why I took the early retirement
option -- it was the simplest way to continue doing
what I wanted to do.)
But unlike IBM and ATT, Microsoft has never produced
any real innovations -- other than novel ways of
driving their competitors out of business. At least
IBM and ATT were famous for reliable products, but
you can't say that for the current monopoly.
John Sowa