Retin-A and Other Youth Miracles Book

I've read it twice, both times capturing my interest because I was involved.

This book rated a 4 or 5 star for me but only because I lived through the times of DEC from 1973 to 1984 as a sales and marketing manager. I knew many of the people mentioned in the book, and certainly KenOlsen, Win Hindle, Stan Olson because of participating in many customer meetings with them both in the home office and in the field.

The author dealt with the higher levels of the company and unfortunately did not get into the personalities and workings of the product lines which were the real strength and culture of Digital Equipment Corporation.

It was an interesting company. Much of our selling was to get the company to meet the needs of the customer, vs getting the customer to buy our products. I worked in Portland, Mexico City a National Sales Manager and Boston (Acton) as a marketing manager for the non-european vice president.

It looks at Ken as a hero, but I believed in 1984 that he had been in his position way too long. He often embarassed us in front of customers. His vision led us astray and he drove away some of our real heros such as Andy Knowles and put others like Jack Shields in very high positions. And not much credit to Bob Hughes who helped DEC enter the commercial (ve engineering) world.

His initial influence on the company was great and many of the guiding principles were terrific, but in a dynamic industry one needs to have vision. Vision to see the workstation market, the PC market and enter rather than criticize them. More later.......