Change

Competing in today's global marketplace requires that organizations continually change the way they do business. Rapid changes quickly make yesterday's strategy obsolete. Clinging to yesterday's product, technology, or customer service invariably stunts the new business or product that is alive and thriving.

When the first Forbes 500 directory appeared in 1969, IBM was in the top spot with a market value of $36 billion. Bill Gates was 13 years old. By 1997, Microsoft ranked fourth on the Forbes Market Value 500. Behind the difficulties of an IBM may be the exciting story of a Microsoft. Below are some examples of people who resisted change.

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
     --Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
     --The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what ... is it good for?"
     --Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
     --Ken Olson, president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
     --Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
     --H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face, not Gary Cooper."
     --Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
     --Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
     --Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."      --Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or, we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So, then, we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'"
     --Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal         computer.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."
     --Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
     --Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
     --Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
     --Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
     --Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
     -- Bill Gates, 1981

"$100 million dollars is way too much to pay for Microsoft."
     -- IBM, 1982