After a surprising coup by the products of their chief rival, Canadian multimedia and graphics company ATi, multimedia giant nVidia had its sight set on regaining its tenure of almost lone dominance on the emerging graphics card market. With their sheer manufacturing power and brain trust working for it, they were confident that a return to success was a paved in gold not far away. How could they not be successful? After all, recent history suggests that with their dominance, it would be hard for any other outside company to outmaneuver them. That was the sentiment throughout most of the industry at the time when ATi released its vaunted and surprisingly powerful Radeon 9700 and 9500 line of graphics processing cards. No, actually, they fell. Instead of outdoing ATi’s revolutionary technology, nVidia made a costly failure in its line that culminated with the short-lived GeForce FX5800 line that nVidia later admitted as "not successful." They stumbled; they fell. But they got back up.
As generally recognized throughout any industry, failure and mistakes are, in the end, not necessarily a bad thing for the company. Through general failures on the part of competing companies, they create valuable insights on how to move forward. Often times, it is said that competition is the sole reason for improvements. It is important, however, to also look at the role of mistakes and failures that go to improve the company and the industry as a whole.
After reviewing its products and internally realizing its lack of success, nVidia pulled the bulky FX5800 from the shelves and they started from scratch learning where they fell short. With ATi prospering with its new Radeon 9700 (later, 9800), nVidia finally built from the ground up with their GeForce 6-series line. It was a legitimate competitor to ATi’s newfound success in its line of cards. Would nVidia have done exactly what they did if they hadn’t failed terribly in their first attempt? Would they have continued developing and adding onto the FX series? I think not. While this can be largely traced back to overall competition, I think learning from failure played a major role. When you stumble, you get back up. You learn from your mistakes. You move on.
I would believe more pertinent to consumers, Microsoft’s rollercoaster ride with its infamous Windows operating systems clearly depicts how numerous shortcomings, more than competition, improves the product. Microsoft’s release of its Windows Millennium Edition (ME) operating system was expected to be a marginal improvement over the older MS-DOS-based operating systems, namely Windows 98 Second Edition. It was, as Microsoft hoped, supposed to be the "home" edition of its Windows 2000 systems. However, the hybrid-technology operating system proved to be a catastrophe as it caused widespread instability and inconvenience to many of the consumers who installed it. With new operating system codenamed "Whistler" already in the works, Microsoft incorporated what they knew from Windows ME into what was eventually labeled Windows XP. What exactly did they learn? They hadn’t completely committed to making the OS as successful as it could have been. Most importantly, while they released a string of successful operating systems that dominated the market, they are completely capable of stumbling just like any other company. They are not fail-proof and are not excluded from any such scrutiny for successes and failures alike.
My Take: Take the Past into the Present
Clearly, to become a better person, a better company, or any existing entity, it is vital to learn from the past. Throughout human history, improvements were made based on the ability to take what mishaps occurred and improve on them. If something doesn’t work or doesn’t work correctly, work at it and try to release something better. If something works, keep at it. Intel learned the lesson. nVidia learned that lesson. So did ATi, Apple, Microsoft, and many other companies involved in this relatively new and modern industry. All of those companies, as I see them, are better off as a result of having stumbled and gotten back up.
Certainly, competition does cause missteps for many. nVidia would not have been openly forced to release its FX series cards so quickly were it not for the heat from ATi’s new card line. Microsoft could simply have sat on their older operating system were it not for the emergence of open source alternatives. But it is also learning from past failures and mistakes that, in the end, result in the overall development of products. Even today, right now, we can observe this phenomenon. When I look at Microsoft, specifically, I would be very curious on how Windows Vista pans out in the coming months and how consumers accept it overall. Initial acceptance is on line with the past, but if Microsoft applied what it learned from its past failures and with its successes, Windows Vista could be a very permanent fixture for years to come.
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