XEROX PARC: INNOVATION WITHOUT PROFIT?

Gopal KrishnanVikalp ChaudharySunita SinghAnirudh

History of ‘Xerox’

1906: Haloid Photographic Company 1906: Chester F. Carlson was born 1939-1944: Turned down by 20 companies 1944: Battelle Memorial Institute , an NPO,

contracted with Carlson to refine his process 1947: Haloid approached Battelle 1948: Haloid decided to call this Xerox 1949: Model ‘A’ was launched in market

Business Expansion1953: Subsidiary in Canada

1960: Rank Xerox 1962: Joint

venture between Fuji Photo film and Xerox

Arrangements for southern and central America

Monopoly Lost!!

1970s: Modification and expansion of business due to patent expiry

Heavy competition from Japanese companies Canon, Ricoh and Sevin Lower operating costs of Japanese ‘70-80: Xerox’s market share fell from 96 to 45% 1980s: Diversification into financial services,

insurance and investment banking later liquidated

PARC

1968: Carlson died and Xerox shifted to Connecticut

1970: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was founded Partly by government Develop technologies of future 1971: First laser printer was developed

1973: The Alto was innovated

Purpose of PARC

Xerox’s fear was that computer would render copiers and typewriters obsolete

PARC was established as a research center that would determine the future of computers and technology

Its job was to invent a future for Xerox that went beyond photocopiers

Innovations at PARC

Laser Printer: Xerox introduced it in market The Alto: First commercial use of mouse, GUI and

Bit mapping Smalltalk: First of objet oriented programming

language used cut, copy and paste editor Windows and Apple Mac used GUI similar to what

was developed at PARC Ethernet: Became standard for LANs, Xerox

started providing it at a nominal fee

Innovations at PARC contd…

Charles Simonyi: Developed ‘Bravo’ and ‘Gypsy’, first user friendly software in 1974

Simonyi joined Microsoft later 1979: Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Xerox 5400: First copier with a build-in diagnostic

microcomputer 1981: Commercial design of personal computers

8010 Star information system, which for the first time had features like title bar, scroll bar, menus, etc.

THE TWO QUESTIONS THAT ARE MOST INTRIGUING?

REASONS

Cultures at Xerox and PARC free wheeling place bureaucratic and sluggish laid back attitude- copier/printer business

Objectives of Scientists and Managers

Time frames

PARC- tremendous autonomy Outside the grasp of headquarters Interested areas Casual atmosphere Flexible timings

lavishly funded

Later stage-New inventions and ideas……..Problems

Myopia

Employees leaving PARC

Did Xerox miss out on some great opportunities?

HUMAN ANGLE

Founder of PARC(Palo Alto Research Center) – Jack Goldman , chief scientist at Xerox in 1969.

George Pake - Director of PARC , was believed to be responsible for relocating the center from Rochester, N.Y to Palo Alto(3000 miles from N.Y)

Attracting best talent available in the country .

Nurturing ‘Leadership through quality’(LTQ) approach – a fully integrated business process.

3 major components of LTQ are : a) Employee Involvement

b) Competitive Benchmarking c) Quality Improvement process

HUMAN ANGLE Competitive Benchmarking – quality , product reliability & cost

Vague Objectives – a cause for concern ?

Diversity of researchers backgrounds and interests.

Robert Taylor – a visionary leader of modern computing technology. Initiated ARPAnet project – forerunner of today’s internet. Awarded ‘National Medal of technology’ in 1999.

Bob Taylor – unmatched leadership in PARC.

Dr. Alan Kay – brain behind the laptop computer. ‘The best way to predict the future is to invent it’

LATER INNOVATIONS

1980s•Superpaint – first pixel based buffer system •Xerox 4050 Laser printer – advanced printing system •PARCtabs and PARCpads – ubiquitous computing •Postscript – page description language(1989)

1990s•LambdaMOO – multi user domain•Xerox 5100 copier •Knowledge management system – Eureka •Blue laser technology •Mobile Doc software – access remote documents

2000 -present

•PARC- subsidiary of Xerox•SmartPaper- portable electronic paper software

Turning points

1980s : ‘ubiquitous computing’ era

1990s: Eureka – dawn of knowledge management system

2000 – present : Commercialisation of ideas by Xerox.

XEROX LEARNING FROM ITS MISTAKES

• PARC as a subsidiary of Xerox• PARC working on new innovations• Xerox New Enterprises (XNE)

• To commercialize the innovations• To provide seed capital and business advice to startup companies

• Xerox Innovation Group (XIG)

Role of Xerox Innovation Group To look after R&D Intellectual Property Management Business Development for Licensing and New

Business Opportunities Business Unit Operations

XIG’s units included:

a. Various Research Centers of Xerox

b. Divisions within the company to develop and market new products

c. Spin-offs to exploit innovations

Take always from the above discussion

A. With all of this Xerox was willing to capitalize on the innovations from PARC

B. And PARC was required to be more focused on the business implication of its research.