Xerox PARC: Innovation without Profit?


IBS CDC IBS CDC IBS CDC IBS CDC RSS Feed
 
Case Studies | Case Study in Business, Management, Operations, Strategy, Case Study

ICMR HOME | Case Studies Collection

Case Details:

Case Code : BSTR150
Case Length : 16 Pages
Period : 1970-2004
Organization : Xerox PARC
Pub Date : 2005
Teaching Note :Not Available
Countries : United States
Industry : -

To download Xerox PARC: Innovation without Profit? case study (Case Code: BSTR150) click on the button below, and select the case from the list of available cases:

Business Strategy Case Studies | Case Study in Business, Management, Operations, Strategies, Case Studies

Price:

For delivery in electronic format: Rs. 400;
For delivery through courier (within India): Rs. 400 + Rs. 25 for Shipping & Handling Charges

» Business Strategy Case Studies
» Business Strategy Short Case Studies
» View Detailed Pricing Info
» How To Order This Case
» Business Case Studies
» Case Studies by Area
» Case Studies by Industry
» Case Studies by Company



Please note:

This case study was compiled from published sources, and is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion. It is not intended to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation. Nor is it a primary information source.

<< Previous

EXCERPTS

Innovations From PARC

One of the first innovative products developed at PARC was the laser printer. Ironically, this was also to prove one of the most profitable product innovations developed at PARC, for Xerox.

Work on the printer was completed in 1971 by Gary Starkweather, who adapted Xerox's copier technology by adding a laser beam to it to develop a laser printer.

The printer, which was called EARS, was demonstrated at PARC in November 1971 and became the prototype of the laser printers that were introduced by Xerox in the years to come. In 1972, Alan Kay, who had earlier worked at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, developed the first version of Smalltalk. It was the first of object-oriented programming languages which used an integrated user interface, overlapping windows, cut and paste editor and integrated documents, and influenced a number of later languages like C++ and Java. 1973 was a landmark year in the history of PARC, when Alto, the world's first Personal Computer (PC) became operational...

Later Innovations

In 1983, Superpaint, which was the first pixel-based frame buffer system won Xerox an Emmy Award. In the mid-1980s Xerox also made a foray into research on Artificial Intelligence. The mid-1980s also saw PARC develop advanced printing products which greatly improved the quality of printing.

The Xerox 4050 laser printer, which was one of the most advanced printing systems of the time (producing typeset quality text and graphics at a rate of 50 pages per minute and having the capability of being linked to host computers or a clusters of workstations), was introduced.

The printing business of Xerox reached a turnover of $ 1 billion a year, by the end of 1986.

The late-1980s saw the beginning of research at PARC on mobile computing devices like PARCTabs and PARCPads, which were the forerunners of the wireless environment.

During this period, scientists at PARC coined the term 'ubiquitous computing', to describe an environment where all tools are portable and wireless...

Excerpts Contd... >>

 

Case Studies Links:- Case Studies, Short Case Studies, Simplified Case Studies.

Other Case Studies:- Multimedia Case Studies, Cases in Other Languages.

Business Reports Link:- Business Reports.

Books:- Textbooks, Work Books, Case Study Volumes.