Ken Olsen, who helped create the modern computer industry in the U.S.as a founder of the Digital Equipment Corporation, at one time the world’s second-largest computer company (second only to IBM), died on Sunday. He was 84.
I'm including this in the Back-to-Basics Blog because Ken Olsen was more than the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation - and an industry icon - he also taught me the meaning of "entrepreneurship".
I worked for Digital Equipment from 1976 until 1981 when I moved west to Silicon Valley. I'd had numerous interactions with Ken during that time and all of them were instructive and memorable. In his memory, I'd like to describe one of those interactions.
The first encounter I had with Ken was at an Operations Committee meeting where I sought approval for a software publishing project that I had pioneered within the company. It was a big deal for me at that time - a product marketing manager struggling to understand the way the intricacies of DEC's organization worked. I was wired for the presentation and nervous.
When I was finally called into the meeting room, Ken Olsen, Gordon Bell, Win Hindle, Ted Johnson and others were around the table waiting. Ken was circling a cartoon in a newspaper, Gordon was waving his arms excitedly in discussion with someone, and Win Hindle was reading through a notebook.
I gave my presentation (this was before Powerpoint :-) and when I was finished, I waited expectantly for questions, comments, or possibly a vote of approval. Instead, Win Hindle suggested that the group take a 10 minute break.
I went to the men's room and inside Ken was there washing his hands. I asked him, "So what happens now? Will it be approved?" He looked at me strangely and gave me what at the time seemed likely an equally strange response. He said "Kurt, you don't come here to get approval. You come here to find out where the problems with your plan are. I didn't hear any problems, so get started."
When Digital implemented its first corporate email system, Ken often sent equally cryptic messages to key managers en masse. I remember one that was on our terminals once Monday morning that said something to the effect of "I was at a John Deere dealership this weekend looking for a tractor. The salesperson there couldn't tell me anything about the tractor I was looking and just handed me a brochure. I'm curious what you make of that?" It was sent to every senior manager throughout the company. LOL.
That was the essence of the culture that Ken created at Digital. Talk to whomever you need to in order to meet your goal - don't worry about organizational lines. Get a consensus from your peers and from anybody affected by what you want to do, and you're good to go. It fostered an environment of planning, intellectual confrontation and compromise that bred entrepreneurs like rabbits.For me, it created a corporate environment that suggested that anything could happen as long as you could come up with a decent plan to do it and get the "buy-in" from anybody that would be impacted by it. It was exciting and enabling beyond belief and I have never seen the likes of it since.
That environment created dozens of entrepreneurs and hundreds of new companies most of which were launched with Ken's blessings and sometimes with his tacit endorsement.
The last time I saw Ken face-to-face was about 8 PM in the evening as I was walking through the Central Engineering labs where Digital's first PC entry was struggling to be born. Digital Equipment was then better than a billion dollar enterprise and Ken was with one of the engineers, sitting in a cubicle,sleeves rolled up, redesigning the monitor for the Digital PC.
The company that Ken built was an amazing place to work. It shaped me and my perspective on product marketing in ways that echoed throughout my career. I will remember Ken as the man that made that possible.
Kurt D. Lynn
February 7, 2011
