Rating: 
Summary: Mandatory for anyone in High Tech Marketing
Review: I found this book fascinating, funny and indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how high tech got to where it is today. I assume most of you remember those Sinclair toys, the Commodore 64 and Apple II computers and many other things that have bitten the dust long ago. This book explains why.
I found it to be a quick amusing read. Mandatory for anyone in High Tech Marketing today.
Rating: 
Summary: A fun, must-read for everybody who works with products
Review: The illustration on the front cover of the book jacket graphically describes the book's colorful content - bad things happen where there is nearly a total lack of business vision. We can presume the bald fellow with the long-vision binoculars scanning the horizon will soon be crushed by the large locomotive immediately to his back. Thus, Merrill Chapman, marketer extraordinaire, describes a number of marketing implosions, sometimes leading to the demise of a high tech product line or even a high tech company.The book deserves to be read by people in corporate sales, marketing, product development, and executive management as case studies of what you should never allow to happen in your company. Sole proprietors take note: beware, this could happen to you, too. Although Chapman illustrates his cases with high tech examples, the products could easily have been soap powder or welding rods. Chapman's style is breezy, personal and hard-hitting, much like Sergio Zyman [The End of Advertising as We Know it and The End of Marketing as We Know It - both must-reads]. Neither Chapman nor Zyman are shrinking violets and neither suffers from an excess of humility. If that style bothers you, then skip the book. Chapman also doesn't suffer the reader with a lot of business analysis after he describes the cases. Instead, he illustrates the points he wants to make in-line with examples. Academic types might wish for more after-the fact analysis; however, they can do that over a latte with their friends at Peets. There are a few non-fatal weaknesses in the book, and it would be unbalanced to not mention them. In one or two instances, Chapman becomes personally abusive - almost racist - to a class of people. This is a bit unfair. Additionally, at about page 193 Chapman seems to run out of energy just as he takes on two giant icons of the Internet bubble - the Internet itself and applications service providers. Chapter 11 should have either been eliminated or re-scoped. Chapman, unfortunately does justice to neither of the two icons. And by the way, last time I checked, both the Internet and ASPs were alive and well, thank you, albeit operating at scaled-back growth but with a lot of hope, promise, and current business traction. I can personally attest that my employer is in both segments - a successful public company that is highly regarded by its customers. The afterworlds, an interview with Joe Spolsky, a software developer, is highly enlightening and very definitely important reading for software product managers and marketers. It contains the secrets for successfully understanding and dealing with your Software Engineering counterparts. Overall, the book deserves a solid 5-star rating for entertainment and an overall rating of 4-stars for content. It is definitely a must-read.
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Summary: Great reading for the beach - or the boardroom....
Review: If you've been wondering what happened to the supposedly technology-driven economy over the last few years, and some of the much-touted players that you no longer hear of, Rick Chapman's book is a must-have as you head out to vacation.
In 20 years of consulting I've read a lot of books on strategy, marketing, impact of technology and the histories of companies and the captains of industry. But few have both the sweep and simultaneously the depth of Chapman's Stupidity. Oh, and don't be mislead by the flip title (it's in keeping with his irreverent style if you've ever seen him give a presentation) - it's a serious look at the strategic errors and bad assumptions that have driven companies and careers into the ground. Good to know if you beginning to wonder where your shop is headed.
Be advised that there are no sacred cows in Stupidity - if you hold a certain company in reverence due to their PR efforts (which he dissects in particular for Microsoft) or perhaps just industry myth and legend, he won't give them any reverence at all.
Although my expertise is in marketing and public relations, I was fascinated by the appendix on Stupid Development Tricks - which is an interview with Joel Spolsky, who some sort of product development guru. The interview brutally dissects how programmers bamboozle non-technical executives (John Sculley being my favorite example) into massive rewrites or poor development decisions - which often doom the company due to a lost window of opportunity - for all the wrong reasons.
If you are the least bit curious as to how the industry got where it is -and what happened to some of the companies and players you never hear about anymore - Stupidity should be on your bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: Funny as well as educational
Review: For anyone in the high tech world, this book is required reading. A nonfiction work that often is as entertaining as any movie script, Chapman offers some profound lessons on how to avoid marketing disasters. I enjoyed reading it and felt that I had gained decades of wisdom that I can apply directly to my work as the Chief Marketing Officer of a publically traded software company.
Rating:
Summary: An immediate classic--fun, honest, on the money analysis
Review: 'In Search of Stupidity' is an excellent analysis of the stupid mistakes within the high-tech industry. Most of the blunders would have been avoided if management hired and listened to professional marketers--instead of engineers or accountants who couldn't explain and implement the 4 P's of the marketing mix if their jobs depended on it (which it did). Rick, as a highly successful and seasoned marketing professional, understands the rules of product segmentation, successful branding approaches, and the value of effective product positioning--which puts him in an excellent position to make this critical and accurate analysis. The book is very entertaining with its tongue and cheek approach, but don't let
that fool you, it is on the money with the analysis. Today's high-tech companies could correct many mistakes (many which are being made all over again) by learning from Rick's examples and advice. I have used another of Rick's books, "The Product Marketing Handbook for Software," for the last six years to train my Motorola and GE marketing teams on effective product marketing. His new book is an immediate classic, and will be used to exemplify how critical it is for the marketing teams to do their job... or they might become the next sad example of 'In Search of Stupidity - part II'."
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining walk down memory lane.
Review: The author describes his experience and observations around famous failures in software industry. The language is very entertaining. His description of MicroPro's dilemma with Word Start and Word Star 2000 'MicroPro wrestled itself to the ground' made me laugh. Author's repeated description of 'I was there', 'I was the first one', 'I still have that floppy' etc. are boring. A bit of foot notes are good, but this book has tons. This is a good book for entertainment. Not a great one if you want to learn something serious.
Rating:
Summary: Stupidity: an infinitely renewable resource --
Review: -- unfortunately.
This is an enjoyable, amusing, and easily digestible account of some of the multi-billion dollar horrors of the PC age. It's written in a very readable style by one of the guys who lived through a lot of it. He's not afraid to name names, and not (much) ashamed to admit that he was in the thick of some bad ones.
Long before the dot-bomb collapse around 2000, companies in the PC world had been shooting themselves in the foot, making (and repeating) insanely bad decisions, and doing everything they could to drive themselves into the ground. Many succeeded in killing themselves off, others (like IBM and Apple) did not. The recurring themes sound simply ridiculous, unless you live in this high-tech world. They they sound ridiculously familiar. They include:
* Expensive acquisitions of companies with nothing to offer,
* Demolition ("rewriting") of bread-and-butter products,
* Selling two, three, or more products that all do the same thing,
* Annoying and ignoring the customers until they all wander away, and
* Whatever it was, doing it again and again.
This mostly has an anecdotal, non-academic style, so it's an easy and enjoyable read. The dark side of that force is that Chapman isn't always strong on constructive suggestions or on the details of the analysis. Sometimes, though, it would have been psychoanalysis - personalities brash and aggressive when there wasn't that much to be brash about.
Chapman covers only the PC side of the world, so he missed some good ones. There was Apollo Computer, for example, and their steadfast determination to avoid advertising their strengths. Still, he gives plenty of cases, and gives good documentary support from the newsrags of the times.
I could have asked for a few more pointers on ways out of the stupidity trap. Simply seeing the examples is useful, though, and gives hope that readers will at least make different mistakes than the ones shown here.
//wiredweird
Rating:
Summary: Back when I was a boy...
Review: Searching for Stupidity is a fun book, particularly for anyone alive twenty years ago. The narrative alternates between PT Barnum and Willie Lowman and the reader gets a good picture of what it was like to market and sell software in the old days.
Rating:
Summary: nice analysis of IT disasters
Review: Chapman gives a witty and entertaining analysis of various marketing disasters in information technology since the 1980s. He offers cogent analysis of whoppers of mistakes.
It was a pleasure to stroll back in time with him and recall such events as IBM's famous PC development. Where it licensed an operating system from then tiny Microsoft. Chapman states that the now common understanding of that event is wrong. Microsoft did not bamboozle IBM, who actually knew full well that Microsoft would in turn have to licence that operating system from someone else.
Other vanished and once great companies grace the pages. Wang, DEC, Ashton-Tate. Closer to home, he also provides a piercing scrutiny of the dotcom craze. He explains why defunct "visionaries" like Webvan, Kozmo and the entire Application System Providers had few viable prospects.
One quibble I have is with his statement that some technologies did not spawn an investing and startup craze. He cites TV and computers, amongst others. But in the instance of computers, this is wrong. Consider the personal computer introduction of the late 70s. A multitude of hardware and software companies were spawned, and many went public, like Eagle Computer and Tandon. Though most ultimately fell by the wayside, especially after the high tech crash of 86. Remember that? While that period did not equal the dot com craze in terms of capital invested and burnt, it was comparable to earlier crazes.
Rating:
Summary: Should have called this In Search of Hilarity
Review: I'm not sure who recommended this book to me but I owe the person a debt of gratitude. I don't think I've ever laughed this hard for any non-fiction book, no less one about the worst mistakes of the computer industry.
Like the author (and some of the other Amazon reviewers) I was there during the early days of the development of the PC industry, first at a hardware manufacturer then at my own sofware company. So I can speak with some authority that the events described in this book are authentic--but authenticity is almost besides the point. What In Search Of... accomplishes is to make you laugh while at the same time teaching you not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
In some ways, this book reminds me of another business book that is long out of print called "Up the Organization." I recommend it if you can find it. But give me one book like "In Search of Stupidity" instead of a dozen written by the usual business "experts" anyday. More readable and infinitely more useful.
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