General Magic

I recently watched a documentary on General Magic (link), a company whose vision of a portable computing device, was so ahead of its time that they failed to succeed. This company had everything aligned for them — the best people (veterans from Apple Mac team), the best location (Silicon valley), the right funding sources (an alliance of tech giants such as Sony and Motorola) — and yet they failed to failed to deliver on their promise. Why did they fail? I think it is because of the following reasons:

1. Failed to prepare well-defined goals
2. Failed to set deadlines for any of those goals
3. Lack of effective management and overnight
4. Tendency to do everything which eventually results in doing nothing
5. Failing to realize what is important and what is superficial
6. Not being able to ship a product unless it seems perfect

My aim in collection these reasons is not to criticize anyone. Rather, by collecting these reasons for failure, it can help all of us in being better at what we do. Doing science and working with teams engaged in scientific research is dear to me. I see well-intentioned brilliant scientists suffer from these same pitfalls, including myself. Hopefully, this post will serve as a reminder of where we need to improve and the things which need to change in order to do our jobs productively and efficiently.