— A quote, attributed to Wang Laboratories cofounder An Wang, about the nature of failure. For much of his career, he knew little about failure. Born in Shanghai in 1920, Wang took advantage of a World War II-era initiative that allowed him to take part in a training program in the United States. This led him to Harvard as a graduate student—and with the war still going on, he was able to get in without too much trouble. While on the Harvard campus, he filed a patent for magnetic core memory, an early form of RAM that proved a fundamental building block for the computing industry. He later sold that patent to IBM for an estimated $500,000—an amount that allowed him to build a company that would later compete with IBM."Failure is inevitable and provides valuable feedback that can move you in the right direction. You have to risk failure to succeed. The important thing is not to make one single mistake that will jeopardize the future."
The product (and strategy) that turned Wang computers into a household name
Wang Laboratories' fatal flaw: Its founder thought it was a family business, until it was too late
When Fred became president—replacing someone with nearly 20 years of experience, John F. Cunningham—he quickly failed to live up to the high expectations set by his father. Within two years, Fred presided over a change in fortunes so significant that a company that once had shares that topped the $800 mark had lost $424 million in a single fiscal year—the equivalent of $936 million today.For years, there have been quiet concern about Fred. Members of the board of directors had worried that Fred did not have the experience, the judgment—the overall heft—to lead the company. Ever since the middle of the 1980s, outside directors had made repeated efforts to persuade the Doctor to bring in a professional manager—to give Fred an impressive title if needed but to avoid placing the young man in operational control of this sprawling, worldwide corporation in the thick of the most competitive industry on earth.
An Wang would not yield. To the directors he said: "He is my son. He can do it."
It could be said that the leadership challenges that Wang Laboratories faced came about largely as a side effect of the shifting waves in computing. It's easier to make an unforced error when you're not keeping up with trends.If you were to compare An Wang to Steve Jobs, as I'm sure some folks are annoyed that I'm doing, you'd find two folks with definitive visions of technology that bled through their given organizations. Additionally, both were defined in part by their competitors—Apple with Microsoft, Wang with IBM.But Apple survived Jobs' departure and eventual passing because it had a steady stream of innovation going on every year. Wang was still producing minicomputers almost until the day it filed for bankruptcy. (Minicomputers were a bad business to be in around 1992.) It struggled to find the next step, and culturally it never did rediscover its footing after An Wang tried to take a step back. He was too important to the company for it to thrive without him.Wang's book Lessons, which came out in the midst of his company's decline, focused mostly on his own formidable history, rather than his company's struggles. Probably for the best—he deserves to be seen for his innovation, not just his weak spots.In 2013, USA Today writer Mark Veverka gave Wang Laboratories the kind of indignity most folks wouldn't wish on their worst enemy: In highlighting the modern computing landscape, he compared Wang to Dell.Wang wasn't Dell—its ads were way better, its leader a stronger visionary—but there's a pretty good lesson about culture in the tale of Wang Laboratories.