There was once a company founded in 1951 that was a by-word for successfully managing technological transition.
Its founder felt he had been hard done by in a patent dispute with IBM and kept a chart in his office showing how his company would overtake IBM in size isometime during the 1990s.
The company's first major product was a calculator capable of computing logarithms made, before ICs were readily available, with 1,275 discrete transistors and costing several thousand dollars.
The founder then realised calculators were going to commoditise and transitioned the company into word processors where it was an instant success.
However, when it became apparent that the IBM PC was going to commoditise word processing, the founder of the company was ill and incapable of managing another transition.
It filed for in Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992.
MORAL: Don't Become Dependent On One Man
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