XEROX PARC:

Gopal Krishnan
Vikalp Chaudhary
INNOVATION WITHOUT
Sunita Singh
Anirudh
PROFIT?
History of ‘Xerox’
 1906: Haloid Photographic Company
 1906: Chester F. Carlson was born
 1939-1944: Turned down by 20 companies
 1944: Battelle Memorial Institute , an NPO,
contracted with Carlson to refine his process
 1947: Haloid approached Battelle
 1948: Haloid decided to call this Xerox
 1949: Model ‘A’ was launched in market
 Business Expansion
1953: 1960: Rank
Subsidiary Xerox 1962: Joint
in Canada venture between
Fuji Photo film
and Xerox

Arrangements
for southern and
central America
Monopoly Lost!!
 1970s: Modification and expansion of business due
to patent expiry
 Heavy competition from Japanese companies
 Canon, Ricoh and Sevin
 Lower operating costs of Japanese
 ‘70-80: Xerox’s market share fell from 96 to 45%
 1980s: Diversification into financial services,
insurance and investment banking later liquidated
PARC
 1968: Carlson died and Xerox shifted to
Connecticut
 1970: Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was
founded
 Partly by government
 Develop technologies of future
 1971: First laser printer was developed
 1973: The Alto was innovated
Purpose of PARC
 Xerox’s fear was that computer would render
copiers and typewriters obsolete
 PARC was established as a research center that
would determine the future of computers and
technology
 Its job was to invent a future for Xerox that went
beyond photocopiers
Innovations at PARC
 Laser Printer: Xerox introduced it in market
 The Alto: First commercial use of mouse, GUI and
Bit mapping
 Smalltalk: First of objet oriented programming
language used cut, copy and paste editor
 Windows and Apple Mac used GUI similar to what
was developed at PARC
 Ethernet: Became standard for LANs, Xerox
started providing it at a nominal fee
Innovations at PARC contd…
 Charles Simonyi: Developed ‘Bravo’ and ‘Gypsy’,
first user friendly software in 1974
 Simonyi joined Microsoft later
 1979: Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI)
 Xerox 5400: First copier with a build-in diagnostic
microcomputer
 1981: Commercial design of personal computers
8010 Star information system, which for the first
time had features like title bar, scroll bar, menus,
etc.
THE TWO QUESTIONS THAT
ARE MOST INTRIGUING?
REASONS
 Cultures at Xerox and PARC
 free wheeling place
 bureaucratic and sluggish
 laid back attitude- copier/printer business

 Objectives of Scientists and Managers

 Time frames
PARC- tremendous autonomy
 Outside the grasp of headquarters
 Interested areas
 Casual atmosphere
 Flexible timings
 lavishly funded

 Later stage-New inventions and ideas……..Problems

 Myopia
 Employees leaving PARC

 Did Xerox miss out on some great

opportunities?
 HUMAN ANGLE

 Founder of PARC(Palo Alto Research Center) – Jack Goldman , chief scientist at

Xerox in 1969.

 George Pake - Director of PARC , was believed to be responsible for relocating the
center from Rochester, N.Y to Palo Alto(3000 miles from N.Y)

 Attracting best talent available in the country .

 Nurturing ‘Leadership through quality’(LTQ) approach – a fully integrated business

process.

3 major components of LTQ are :

a) Employee Involvement

b) Competitive Benchmarking

c) Quality Improvement process

 HUMAN ANGLE
 Competitive Benchmarking – quality , product reliability & cost

 Vague Objectives – a cause for concern ?

 Diversity of researchers backgrounds and interests.

 Robert Taylor – a visionary leader of modern computing technology.

Initiated ARPAnet project – forerunner of today’s internet.
Awarded ‘National Medal of technology’ in 1999.

 Bob Taylor – unmatched leadership in PARC.

 Dr. Alan Kay – brain behind the laptop computer.

‘The best way to predict the future is to invent it’
 LATER INNOVATIONS

2000
1980s 1990s -present
●
Superpaint – first pixel
based buffer system ●
LambdaMOO – multi ●
PARC- subsidiary
Xerox 4050 Laser printer user domain
of Xerox
●

– advanced printing ●
Xerox 5100 copier
system ●
Knowledge management ●
SmartPaper-
●
PARCtabs and PARCpads system – Eureka portable
– ubiquitous computing ●
Blue laser technology
●
Postscript – page ●
Mobile Doc software – electronic paper
description access remote documents software
language(1989)
Turning points

 1980s : ‘ubiquitous computing’ era

 1990s: Eureka – dawn of knowledge management

system

 2000 – present : Commercialisation of ideas by

Xerox.
 XEROX LEARNING FROM ITS
MISTAKES
• PARC as a subsidiary of Xerox
• PARC working on new innovations

• Xerox New Enterprises (XNE)

• To commercialize the innovations

To provide seed capital and business advice to
•

startup companies
• Xerox Innovation Group (XIG)
 Role of Xerox Innovation Group
 To look after R&D
 Intellectual Property Management
 Business Development for Licensing and New
Business Opportunities
 Business Unit Operations
 XIG’s units included:
a. Various Research Centers of Xerox
b. Divisions within the company to develop and market
new products
c. Spin-offs to exploit innovations
Take always from the above discussion
A. With all of this Xerox was willing to capitalize on
the innovations from PARC
B. And PARC was required to be more focused on the
business implication of its research.