Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Alumni
  • Login
  • Volunteer
  • Clubs
  • Reunions
  • Magazine
  • Class Notes
  • Help
  • Give Now
  • Stories
  • Alumni Directory
  • Lifelong Learning
  • Careers
  • Programs & Events
  • Giving
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Alumni→
  • Stories→

Stories

Stories

212
212 views
18 Jul 2019

Lessons from the Rise and Fall of VisiCalc

Re: Dan Bricklin (MBA 1979)
Topics: Technology-SoftwareHistory-Business History
ShareBar

Dan Bricklin (right) with his MIT classmate and VisiCalc collaborator Bob Frankston (photo by Richard Chase)

Dan Bricklin (right) with his MIT classmate and VisiCalc collaborator Bob Frankston (photo by Richard Chase)

It was 1979 when Dan Bricklin (MBA 1979) and Bob Frankston made history by launching VisiCalc, the world’s first independent software company and the first spreadsheet program for personal computers. The program came with a $100 price tag, but people were so eager for it that they also bought an Apple II, to the tune of $2,000, in order to run it, according to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal. Steve Jobs said that VisiCalc “propelled the Apple II to the success it achieved more than any other single event.” It also was the force behind the later success of Microsoft in business computing. But VisiCalc’s success would be notoriously short lived.

Forty years later, VisiCalc is long gone—but the tech industry has embraced lessons learned by its experience that continue to shape strategy and decision-making of engineers and executives alike. Among those lessons:

First, new empires take shape at the dawn of a new platform. In the case of VisiCalc, accountants shifted from centuries-old practice of handwritten ledgers to a digital spreadsheet on a personal computer.

Which leads to the second lesson, which is that “a killer app doesn’t guarantee enduring success.” When Mitch Kapor left the company and built Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC, VisiCalc became perhaps the first casualty of what Clayton Christensen would call a disruptive innovation. Lotus bested VisiCalc by offering the same major features plus a handful of others, such as variable column widths and the ability to create charts and graphs. Plus it had speed.

These days it’s much harder for upstarts to challenge the dominance of the tech giants, who tend to get further out in front of potential disruption. Take, for example, the way Microsoft embraced the shift to cloud-based software, or how Google had the vision to invest heavily in and acquire Android.

“Certainly there are still examples of new companies rising, but it’s hard today to imagine the handful of giants that loom so tall over the tech world allowing themselves to go the way of VisiCalc or Lotus. And the more wealth they accrue to buy into new technologies, spreading their bets evenly around the whole roulette wheel, the more invulnerable they appear,” writes Christopher Mims.

READ MORE

ShareBar

Featured Alumni

Dan Bricklin
MBA 1979
Login to send a message

Post a Comment

Featured Alumni

Dan Bricklin
MBA 1979
Login to send a message

Related Stories

    • 01 Jun 2024
    • HBS Alumni Bulletin

    Case Study: Ready for an Upgrade

    Re: Malory Mclemore (MBA 2022); Anne Wen (MBA 2022); Lara Hodgson (MBA 1998); Chris Yeh (MBA 2000); By: Jen McFarland Flint
    • 01 Mar 2024
    • HBS Alumni Bulletin

    Elevator Pitch: Banking On It

    Re: Marc Escapa Riera (MBA 2017); Andres Klaric (MBA 2017)
    • 25 Aug 2022
    • HBS Alumni Bulletin

    In My Humble Opinion: Road Tested

    Re: Robin Gregg (MBA 2002); Meg Whitman (MBA 1979); By: Julia Hanna
    • 01 Jun 2022
    • HBS Alumni Bulletin

    A Sustainable Solution for Fashion

    Re: James Theuerkauf (MBA 2021); Ferdinand Stockmann (MBA 2021); Jeffrey J. Bussgang (Senior Lecturer of Business Administration); By: April White

More Related Stories

Stories Featuring Dan Bricklin

    • 06 Dec 2018
    • HBS Alumni Bulletin

    Source Code

    Re: Donna Dubinsky (MBA 1981); Dan Bricklin (MBA 1979); David B. Yoffie (Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration); By: Dan Morrell; illustrations by Daniel Hertzberg
    • 16 Dec 2009
    • Alumni Stories

    Apps for Daily Living

    Re: Dan Bricklin (MBA 1979); John Buchanan (MBA 2009); Stu Wall (MBA 2009)
 
 
 
ǁ
Campus Map
External Relations
Harvard Business School
Teele Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Phone: 1.617.495.6890
Email: alumni+hbs.edu
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
  • Terms of Use
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College.