Ken Olsen, the co-founder and Ceo of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), is dead at 84.  In so many ways, Ken represented the best of US entrepreneurship. He took on the “nobody gets fired for buying IBM” head on and with a better mousetrap created a valuable business with energetic, talented employees and an extremely loyal customer following. Some of my first programming was on a DEC PDP-11.

Ken was a personable, visionary able to attract talented people and get the best from them.  His flat organization was noted as a wonderful place to work and allowed thousands of people to pursue their passion both inside DEC and all along the 128 Corridor.

I’m afraid Ken will be remember less for his spot-on prediction of the minicomputer market than for his equally wrong prediction for desktop computers.  Dismissing them as toys, he steered DEC away from so long, they were too far behind to catch up by the time they changed direction.

How did a company with such a clear vision of individual capabilities and freeing the business from the power of IT miss the largest power shift up until that time in computer history?  In so many ways, Olsen and DEC demonstrate the power and weakness of a visionary leader.  Rumors from the old mill DEC used as headquarters,  suggest the company had a “Ken said” mentality.  Every decision was based on what the people around the table thought “Ken said”.  Great when Ken’s experience and view of the market were right, but way wrong when the views of those closer to the PC market were ignored.

Ok, I have a habit of grabbing an interesting book and then taking a few months, or in some cases a few years, to get to them.  That is the case with David Hackett Fischer‘s Washington’s Crossing. I’m certainly glad I finally decided to pick it back up.

[openbook booknumber="0195170342"]

I don’t think I’m giving away the story by beginning with Fischer’s last few lines:

They set a high example, and we have much to larn from them. Much recent historical writing has served us ill in that respect. In the late twentieth century, too many scholars tried to make the American past into a record of crime and folly. Too many writers have told us that we are captives of our darker selves and helpless victims of our history. It isn’t so, and never was. The story of Washington’s Crossing tells us that Americans in an earlier generation were capable of acting in a higher spirit–and so are we.

This is the essence that Fisher tried to capture in telling the story of the Continental Army’s activities between March, 1776 and February, 1777.  It is the first of two major themes in the book.  The fact that many of the American leaders felt they were fighting for a just cause and needed to do things in a just way to keep favor on their side.   The second was to portray many actors in this most important of dramas in a different light, an accurate light.  There were many aspects of the battles around Christmas, 1776, that differed greatly from the versions I recall from other accounts.  I’ll leave it to you to uncover these for yourself.

Economic Scene – Deficit Builds as Americans Pay Less and Get More – NYTimes.com.