Merrill R. Chapman: In Search of Stupidity

Reviewed by DENIS JOSEPH

Merrill R. Chapman: In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 years of high-tech marketing disasters

Current management theory has a launch date of 1982 when In Search of Excellence was published.Written by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, the book clocked a million copies in its first print run.

As John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge, staff editors of the Economist, observe in The Witch Doctors: "The book came at a time when America was worried about its declining competitiveness. Unemployment figures had hit a high 10 per cent, amidst a glut of books extolling the wonders of Japanese management."

It was just the tonic that corporate America needed to boost its morale.

In Search of Excellence listed several leading companies, including a few high-tech names, and exhorted industry to implement the lessons.

The trumpeting lasted for several years but a few analysts were already picking up the discordant notes.

As early as 1984, Business Week published a cover story entitled "Oops!" that debunked some of the book's claims, but the tide of popularity swamped any flags of caution being run up.

Nevertheless, two companies - Amdahl and Data General - were in rigor mortis a few months later.

During the next 20 years, enough evidence was apparent that all wasn't well with some of the "excellent" high-tech companies.

In fact, "disaster" seemed a more appropriate word. And it needed an insider to chronicle the stupidity that led to the demise of famous names in high-tech America as well as the successful perseverance of others, due mainly to a lesser degree of ... you guessed it ... stupidity.

Rick Chapman's In Search of Stupidity is a fascinating thriller of billion-dollar bungling, of loud-mouthed egos, death-wish rituals and the constant slug-fest between the suits and the geeks.

Written in an easy, chatty style without the IT gobbledegook, Chapman's book is like Everyman's journey - in search of the Tech Grail along an information highway littered with dinosaurs, demons, self-destruct advertising and, well ... tombstones.

The stories are sprinkled with nuggets of stupidity, such as Intel's Inside stories, Motorola's Digital DNA and the venture cap blowouts during the dotcom lotus-eating days.

(The chapter on the internet and the ASP busts is aptly titled Purple Haze All Through My Brain!) Of course, not everyone was plain stupid. Some made mistakes and learned from them. (Bill Gates is not the kind of man to repeat a mistake).

Others fell short of ultimate oblivion and survived to fight another day.

For anyone connected with commerce, marketing, software, public relations and communications, In Search of Stupidity is an enjoyable read. Sprinkled with anecdotes, first-hand observations and ghoulish humour, the behind-the-scenes financial mayhem is ruthlessly documented and complemented with cheeky illustrations by Marc Richard.

In spite of the title, the book comes with inherent wisdom. It has ample lessons in common sense, born out of hindsight, for companies and individuals not to rush in where angels fear to tread.

However, the career-minded reader has been warned. Because no tech organisation is immune to hara-kiri and if you hear phrases such as "crufty code" and "bad architecture" as launch date approaches, dig out the resume and click on Send.

Last, but not least, the book is blessed with a foreword and an afterword by Joel Spolsky, president and one of the founders of Fog Creek Software. (The afterword is in the form of an interview).

And talking about the original corporate wisdom that kick-started it all, Tom Peters confessed in Fast Company that the data from In Search of Excellence was faked. "Pretty small beer," said Peters.

* Published by Apress, $60 (hardback)

* Denis Joseph lives in Auckland and describes himself as an over-qualified, over-experienced, non-salaried creative adman.

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