ALWAYS SAY LESS THAN NECESSARY. The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.
Have you ever heard of the term Osborne effect?
When we think about personal computers, we always think of either windows or Mac. Both are widely used but none of them was the first in personal portable computing. It was Osborne-I.
In 1981, Osborne computer corporation founded by Adam Osborne released the first commercially available personal portable computer Osborne-I. It runs the CP/M Operating System, came with two built-in floppy drives, a detachable full-size keyboard with numeric keypad and monochrome CRT monitor. It weighs 11Kg approximately. So it may not be portable but luggable.
The cost of this system was $1795 which was good considering that it was bundled with about $1,500 of free software.
- CP/M Utility
- CP/M Operating System
- SuperCalc spreadsheet application
- WordStar word processing application with MailMerge
- Microsoft MBASIC programming language (interpreted)
- Digital Research CBASIC programming language (compiled)
The product was a huge hit, within a year it generated $73 million revenue and sales reaching 10000 units per month. Even though the product was a success, Osborne computer corporation filed for bankruptcy in September 1983 because of one mistake.
The Osborne effect is a social phenomenon of customers cancelling or deferring orders for the current soon-to-be-obsolete product as an unexpected drawback of a company’s announcing a future product prematurely.
Adam Osborne was talking to journalists and during his talk, he mentioned about the upcoming new products Osborne-Executive and Osborne vixen. This was a huge mistake as both models were still in development and better than Osborne-I. Due to that customers/dealers stopped/cancelling buying Osborne-I. Unsold Osborne-I product inventory piled up and the prices were heavily cut down to $995. But the damage is done already. This was the biggest reason why computer companies keep their product development as well as release in secret.
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish. — Robert Greene
Robert Greene wrote the book “48 laws of power” in 1998. The laws mentioned in the book are brutal and unethical. But clearly its a reflection of those who are in high power and wants to remain in power. The Book is a must-read for anyone who wants to become an entrepreneur and you can get it from Amazon.
