The fourth of the deadly business sins is slaughtering tomorrow's opportunity on the altar of yesterday. It is what derailed IBM. IBM's downfall was paradoxically caused by unique success: IBM's catching up, almost overnight, when Apple brought out the first PC in the mid-1970s. This feat actually contradicts everything everybody now says about the company's "stodginess" and its "bureaucracy." But then when IBM had gained leadership in the new PC market, it subordinated this new and growing business to the old cash cow, the mainframe computer.
Top management practically forbade the PC people to sell to potential mainframe customers. This did not help the mainframe business -- it never does. But it stunted the PC business. All it did was create sales for the IBM "clones" and thereby guarantee that IBM would not reap the fruits of its achievement.
This is actually the second time that IBM has committed this sin. Forty years ago, when IBM first had a computer, top management decreed that it must not be offered where it might interfere with the possible sale of punch cards, then the company's cash cow. Then, the company was saved by the Justice Department's bringing an antitrust suit against IBM's domination of the punch-card market, which forced management to abandon the cards -- and saved the fledgling computer. The second time providence did not come to IBM's rescue, however.