Reprint r0108b
HBR Case Study r0108a
What a Star –What a Jerk
Sarah Cliffe
First Person r0108b
Natural-Born Entrepreneur
Dan Bricklin
Different Voice r0108c
Is Success a Sin? A Conversation with the Reverend Peter J. Gomes
In Praise of Middle Managers r0108d
Quy Nguyen Huy
The Superefficient Company r0108e
Michael Hammer
The Weird Rules of Creativity r0108f
Robert I. Sutton
What You Don’t Know r0108g
About Making Decisions
David A. Garvin and Michael A. Roberto
We Don’t Need Another Hero r0108h
Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
Best Practice r0108j
Sustainable Growth, the DuPont Way
Chad Holliday
Tool Kit r0108k
Distance Still Matters:
The Hard Reality of Global Expansion
Pankaj Ghemawat
September 2001 was lucky. No doubt about it.
In 1979, when my partner, Bob
Frankston, and I created VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet, we didn’t realize it would jump-start the personal computer industry–let alone revolutionize the way businesses kept records and tested financial scenarios.
In the midst of my studies at Harvard Business School,
I had grown more than a little frustrated by having to manually calculate and recalculate every single change on a spreadsheet as I worked through a case study. There had to be a better way, I figured, so I started designing a computer program to address those inefficiencies. I described my idea to Bob Frankston, whom I’d met as an undergraduate at MIT, and he agreed to try to turn my primitive prototype into a working program. After toiling for several months in the attic of Bob’s home, we had a hunch that we might have something big on our hands. The rest of the VisiCalc story is replete with the usual twists and turns – not to mention some very difficult downturns. But that cool little software program is still regarded as the first killer
Copyright © 2001 by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. 3