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Silicon Follies
Silicon Follies
Chapter 54: Kiki and Barry reunited by Iridium -- silence at $40 a minute
By Thomas Scoville
[09/18/99]

Books
Hollywood snares
Online entertainment companies have tangled the Web with bad TV simulations. Now "Digital Babylon" portrays their failures -- but can it help prevent new ones?
By Janelle Brown
[09/17/99]

The art of Don E. Knuth
Computing's philosopher king argues for elegance in programming -- and a Pulitzer Prize for the best written.
By Mark Wallace
[09/16/99]

Silicon Follies
Silicon Follies
Chapter 53: Paul flames out; Liz and Laurel cash in.
By Thomas Scoville
[09/15/99]

Books
The modest inventor
"Weaving the Web" holds the promise of a facinating tell-all book about how Tim Berners-Lee created the Web -- but it just doesn't tell all that much.
By Scott Kirsner
[09/15/99]

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My reading hasn't been a complete waste, of course. My extended wanderings through the variegated offerings of the business press permitted my discovery of some enlightening similarities -- if only in a literary sense. I have started to think of business books as genre fiction; just like spy thrillers, mystery novels and bodice-rippers, these works also cleave to a standard form. I can say with some confidence that I've identified the dominant recipe.

Step 1: Identify a thorny, white-collar problem, anything from "how do I invest in Internet stocks without losing my shirt, shoes and socks?" to "how can I transform my employees from a motley band of unmotivated, slouching miscreants into an, energized, passionate 'team' with a totally go-for-it, win/win attitude?"

The Gorilla Game: Picking Winners in High Technology By Geoffrey A. Moore, Paul Johnson, Tom Kippola Harper Business 358 pages

Step 2: Establish author's credentials to solve same. Be sure to look for the magic invocations: Harvard Business School (alternatively Wharton or Sloan) and/or any major brokerage, venture capital or investment banking firms (but call them "I-banks" -- one of the hidden attractions of business books is the access to the hip argot of big-league MBAs).

Step 3: Present major thesis -- just not all at once. Do it coyly, like a rhetorical strip-tease, so as not to call attention to the single note concealed beneath the Seven Veils of Highly Effective Leaders, or whatever the current fashion being modeled.

Step 4: Oops -- 200 more pages to fill. Time to recapitulate major thesis in multiple variations, or present case study after case study that supports the major thesis while studiously avoiding ones that don't.

Even when viewed from such a disenchanted perspective, I must confess: "The Gorilla Game: Picking Winners in High Technology" is an engaging, and perhaps even profound, Post-It. It goes like this:

Only invest your money in "gorillas" -- companies with exclusive franchises in rapidly expanding markets.

Well, duh! (Insert your own monkey-house noises here.)

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