The Invention of the PC

This story has all those “Creative Destruction” elements that were once outlined by Joseph Schumpeter: Innovation, entrepreneurship, business strategy, capital investment leading to the destruction of old products to give room to the new.

I am not going to retell the story of the PC here. This story is already told by Robert X. Cringely in the PBS documentary “Triumph of the Nerds.” It is a story about:

• Entrepreneurship and the inevitable pursuit of success by those like Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Ed Roberts, and others from the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley.
  
• The important role of the banks and venture capitalists: How Steve Jobs, “the scruffy 19 year-old seduced the conservative world of venture capitalists” (R. Cringely).
  
• The element of luck as exhibited in the time when IBM was looking for a third party to develop the Operating System for its new PC, lucky for Microsoft.
  
• The importance of a sound Strategy because it takes more than luck: How Microsoft would stay on “the bear’s back [IBM] and the bear would twist and turn and try to buck you and throw you” (S. Ballmer).
  

Today, IBM is not anything like that computer giant it once was. It is still a very important company but not the same. Apple is a synonym of innovation. Microsoft is a synonym of industrial success. And Intel taught us Moore’s Law: How microprocessor technology advances by doubling performance every 18 months, creating a fascinating Economics problem.