Firstest sometimes the Worstest

[Niel Leon]

I started a Forum Thread about Product Development - http://www.brandingservices.org/forum/topic/show?id=1699302%3ATopic... -

where I noted that being first and original is not always the best road to success with new products. If being the FIRST with a new product was the ultimate situation then patents woulds have a much higher success than they do. In the USA there are over 7,320,000 patents. Of thoses patents active and expired less than 5% ever made an money for the patent holder.

I have an excellent example of a company that tried to be the first, but failed mightly. The company was Exxon Office Systems. I worked for Qyx one of the four subsidiaries. They were part of Exxon in the mid to late 70's and into 1982 when Exxon Offices Systems was disbanded and thrown on the trash heap of failed companies. Still Exxon brought to the market three products that few successful companies can be without if they want to compeat in the world economy:

• The word processor (originally a stand alone machine now a softward package in PC's) - Vydec
• The memory typewriter (now low cost printers merged with word processing sofware on PC's) - Qyx
• The low cost fax machine (in the process of being replace by PDF's sent by e-mail) - Quip

All the products used a new device, the micro-processor, then produced by the then Exxon subsidiary - Zylog. Only Zylog is still around as a company though Exxon is no longer involved.

Unfortunately all these devices were buggy, lacked reliability, were difficult and expensive to build, not very user friendly. So being first is not always the road to happiness. To be successful in the world of product development you have to do it RIGHT. (Sounds like a topic of my next Blog)

Niel Leon - Unicorn Technical Services

http://www.uni-tech-serv.com