Page 82 - The Resilient Organization

Case Study: Innovation Trauma and Resilience 69

“thin-client” product that Sun marketed aggressively. As one engineer
explained, “At the time that JavaStations came on the scene, we were actu-
ally looking at all the reasons why it was not going to be a success. In our
minds, JavaStation was quite simply a bad idea poorly implemented.”
Partly as a reaction to the JavaStations, then, these engineers began tinker-
ing with their own thin-client approach. At first each member worked only
part-time on Sun Ray (then codenamed NeWT, for “network terminal”);
yet the project captured their collective imagination, and soon they dropped
all other work in order to focus on the Sun Ray full time.
The team debuted a Sun Ray prototype at Sun’s annual Spring
Leadership Conference, where Sun Labs traditionally unveiled new tech-
nologies. This internal showcase impressed numerous Sun leaders, includ-
ing Scott McNealy, Sun’s president and (then) CEO. Emboldened by their
success, the team members looked to find a home for the Sun Ray within
one of Sun’s mainstream product groups. Eventually, the Sun Ray group
moved into a hardware division, ironically housed in the same business unit
and building as the JavaStation product.
The Sun Ray’s core team grew organically and worked tirelessly. Since
most of Sun’s organizational attention was focused on the JavaStation, the
Sun Ray group was able to operate in relative isolation. Team members
reported the experience as a “start-up within Sun,” an experience that pro-
vided both focus and camaraderie. Team members worked 12 to 15 hours
a day, seven days a week and through holidays, not missing a single day
because of illness, injury, or vacation. Their efforts paid off too, as the team
went from producing a prototype followed by a final product in nine
months, a Sun record at the time.
After nearly three years of investment and high expectations, the floun-
dering JavaStation product was canceled a month before the Sun Ray’s offi-
cial release in 1999. As an alternative to laying off the entire group, Sun’s
leadership decided to combine the JavaStation team of over 200 people and
the Sun Ray team of 20 people. The Sun Ray group suddenly inherited a
legion of people and skills it didn’t need. As one engineer recalled, “We were
in a situation in which we had this huge group building stuff because we had
people and not because there was a demand for it.” The Sun Ray group also
inherited a group whose morale was at its nadir, and the once start-up enthu-
siasm within the team vanished into infighting and empire building.