CHAPTER 1Searching for Sustained Performance
The world breaks everyone…those that will not break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
—Ernest Hemingway
The business environment is a merciless place. Before Microsoft, Apple, or Google, there was the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson incorporated DEC in Maynard, Massachusetts, in 1957, the same year that Hewlett-Packard went public. The investment community was so hostile toward computers that Georges Doriot, whose American Research and Development Corporation provided seed capital, suggested they change the originally ...
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