Xerox executives from the East Coast, whose entire business model was selling large, centralized copiers, could not comprehend the value of small, networked, personal devices. When Steve Jobs of Apple visited PARC in 1979 in exchange for allowing Xerox to invest $1 million in Apple (a deal that would net Xerox over $100 million), he saw the future. He famously remarked, "Why aren’t you doing anything with this? This is the greatest thing." Xerox let the GUI and mouse slip away. Apple released the Lisa (1983) and Macintosh (1984). Microsoft later copied the concept for Windows. Xerox’s own attempt to commercialize the Alto, the Xerox Star (8010) in 1981, was technologically brilliant but priced at $16,000+ per workstation, a commercial failure.
Xerox is the quintessential tale of . It is a parable of how success can breed myopia. The company invented the PC, the GUI, Ethernet, and the laser printer – the building blocks of the 21st-century office – and gave them away for free because they didn’t fit its existing business model of selling copies per page. It is a permanent case study in business schools about the "innovator’s dilemma": The very management practices that make a company dominant in its market make it nearly incapable of responding to disruptive change. xerox wikipédia
However, this pivot left the original hardware business weakened. The rise of the "paperless office" – ironically enabled by the scanning and digital workflow technologies Xerox had helped create – steadily eroded the demand for printing and copying. Xerox executives from the East Coast, whose entire
The brand name "Xerox" remains one of the most famous in the world, a genericized trademark like "Kleenex" or "Google." But the company is now a mid-tier technology services and printing firm, a resilient survivor rather than a world-beater. It serves as a powerful, cautionary ghost at the feast of every successful technology company: Are you building the future, or are you building a better buggy whip for the present? This is the greatest thing