The story of Olivetti is interesting and sad. They had many opportunities to be the Italian Apple (they even owned ARM from 1985 to 1998!), all of them missed because of terrible management choices.
The Programma 101 was a perfect combination of innovative technology, usability and industrial design. When it was introduced at the New York World's Fair it stole the show. However, the management decided not to pursue any more r&d on the project. Some of the reasons:
- They were afraid it would jeopardize their mainframe business (which they sold soon after that anyway)
- They thought it was useless. One of the managers even told Perotto "if nobody is building this, it means nobody needs it"
This gave HP enough time to copy the design and rule the market.
A couple of years ago a documentary was made on the history of the Programma 101, I found it very instructive. Unfortunately only the trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noN0zNYFs9I) has English subtitles, the documentary is only in Italian.
As an interesting aside it's also interesting to read about Adriano Olivetti [1]. He advocated revenue sharing, increasing of fringe benefits and reducing of working hours during his time at the helm of the company. This is all the more incredible if you think he managed to do all this during fascism, while also helping the underground resistance.
Some commenters think that even if Programma 101 was designed shortly after Adriano's death, it's the culture he helped build which allowed Olivetti to produce such advanced and beautiful products.
It is also worth noting that Olivetti's attitude towards workers and work-life balance could not be any more anti-Apple…
You're right, I've got the timeline a bit messed up. Anyway, I'm sure that the project met resistance at some point because of the competition with the mainframe business.
Maybe at its inception. I guess that the real problem there was that the project wasn't the pet of any specific big manager in the company - a real pity.
Sounds like a cookie-cutter case of the Innovator's Dilemma. An established company with high-end, high-margin customers ignores or neglects a low-end market due to lower margins and the threat of cannibalizing their high-margin business, allowing for someone else to swoop in and do it instead, again becoming the top of the heap.
"Developed between 1962 and 1964, it was saved from the sale of the computer division to GE thanks to an employee who one night changed the internal categorization of the product from "computer" to "calculator", leaving the small team in Olivetti and creating some awkward situations in the office, since the building except that office was then owned by GE"
The Danish Computer History Museuem is currently restoring a Programma 101. Right now we're trying to construct some magnetic cards for the card-reader.
There is a documentary that explains a lot of technical details and the history of the project, but unfortunately it is in italian only without english subtitles... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYB2oBc1BpA
The Programma 101 was a perfect combination of innovative technology, usability and industrial design. When it was introduced at the New York World's Fair it stole the show. However, the management decided not to pursue any more r&d on the project. Some of the reasons:
- They were afraid it would jeopardize their mainframe business (which they sold soon after that anyway)
- They thought it was useless. One of the managers even told Perotto "if nobody is building this, it means nobody needs it"
This gave HP enough time to copy the design and rule the market.
A couple of years ago a documentary was made on the history of the Programma 101, I found it very instructive. Unfortunately only the trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noN0zNYFs9I) has English subtitles, the documentary is only in Italian.