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232 Endnotes

CHAPTER 5

1. Oracle Corporation acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009 in competi-
tion with IBM.
2. Liisa Välikangas, Martin Hoegl, and Michael Gibbert, “Why
Learning from Failure Isn’t Easy (And What to Do About It):
Innovation Trauma at Sun Microsystems,” European Management
Journal, 2008. Reprinted with permission.
3. Data were stored at a server where they were centrally managed,
which rendered the computer box in the office just a dummy terminal.
4. “Sun Ray is one of the coolest—but most poorly marketed—products
I’ve seen in 20 years. The idea that anyone can insert his employee
badge into any computer in the world and watch his own desktop
appear on the screen instantly is astounding. Show the world what
you [Scott McNealy] showed me in your office in December, and Sun
will rise again.”
5. The success of a particular innovation such as Sun Ray is subject
not only to competence and hard work but to luck, timing, and
serendipity. An innovation that fails may eventually succeed as
conditions outside the innovator’s control change (such as the
emergence of complementary technologies or the maturing of user
attitudes).

CHAPTER 6

1. I thank Professor Yves Doz for feedback on this piece. I am grateful
for many conversations around the notion of creeping commitment.
All shortcomings are of course mine.
2. Ashby’s law of requisite variety: The larger the variety of actions
available to a control system, the larger the variety of perturbations
it is able to compensate. Or, only variety can destroy variety.
3. I am grateful to Matti Copeland of Helsinki for suggesting this
method as a way of making “intelligent decisions.”