{"product_id":"joe-wilson-and-the-creation-of-xerox-isbn-9780471998358","title":"Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox","description":"\"Charley Ellis has written a magnificent portrait, capturing the indomitable spirit of Joe Wilson and his instinctive understanding of the need for and commercial usefulness of a transforming imaging technology. Joe Wilson and his extraordinary team, which I had the good fortune to first meet in 1960, epitomized the wonderful observation of George Bernard Shaw who said, 'Some look at things that are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were and ask why not?'  \u003cp\u003eXerox and xerography are not only a part of our vocabulary, but part of our everyday life. Charley Ellis gives the reader a poignant understanding of just how this happened through the life, adventures, critical business decisions, and dreams of Joseph Wilson and a cadre of remarkable individuals.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis book will surely join the library of memorable biographies that capture the building of America into a risk-tolerant, technologically sophisticated, idea-oriented society that thrives by understanding what Charles Darwin really said:\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e'Survival will be neither to the strongest of the species, nor to the most intelligent, but to those most adaptable to change.'\"\u003cbr\u003e —Frederick Frank, Vice Chairman, Lehman Brothers Inc.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIntroduction by \u003ci\u003eAnne M. Mulcahy\u003c\/i\u003e, Chairman and CEO of Xerox Corporation ix\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eForeword by \u003ci\u003eJoel Podolny\u003c\/i\u003e, Dean, Yale School of Management xv\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e1 Early Years 1\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e2 Peggy 13\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e3 The Thirties 19\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e4 Years of Struggle 29\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e5 Chet Carlson 39\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e6 Battelle 51\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e7 Contact—Just Barely 57\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e8 Sol Linowitz 67\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e9 Toward Xerox 79\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e10 The University 97\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e11 Worst of Times, Best of Times 111\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e12 Joe Wilson 131\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e13 IBM, RCA, and GE 135\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e14 Gathering Strength in Finance 147\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e15 Building the Organization 157\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e16 Going International 177\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e17 Going It Alone 191\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e18 5¢ 199\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e19 The 914 209\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e20 Go! 225\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e21 Getting on Message 239\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e22 Xerox: Zoom-Zoom 259\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e23 Fuji-Xerox 267\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e24 Challenges of Success 275\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e25 Minister Florence 289\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e26 Life 301\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e27 Public Service 315\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e28 Winding Down 325\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e29 No Longer CEO 337\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e30 At the Rockefellers’ 353\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAfterword 359\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eJoe Wilson: In His Own Words 371\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcknowledgments 377\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIndex 381\u003c\/p\u003e  \"An inspiring biography\" (\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e, November 2006)  \u003cp\u003eIf you run a business and aspire to make it great, you owe it to yourself to read \u003ci\u003eJoe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox\u003c\/i\u003e by Charles D. Ellis. Despite occasionally pedestrian writing, the book rewards the reader with dramatic accounts of how one great leader managed to influence change rather than just react to it.\u003cbr\u003e Wilson knew little about technology, yet he--not the brilliant techies with whom he surrounded himself--created the modern copier industry. \u003cb\u003eXerox\u003c\/b\u003e was an old Rochester, N.Y., company that was small, obscure and unambitious until Wilson took over from his dad in the late 1940s. In a sense, his takeover kicked off the technology revolution that shook American industry out of its somnolence. Early investors with small stakes in Xerox became multimillionaires. Later investors lost billions looking for the \"next Xerox.\" They would have done better searching for the next Joe Wilson.\u003cbr\u003e His tact and lack of ego held together a necessarily diverse bunch of people. Sol Linowitz, the company lawyer, upstaged him by letting it be said on national television that he, not Wilson, was the father of Xerox. Wilson ignored it: Linowitz was important to the company, and Wilson wanted success, not an ego massage. He grasped the importance of image. He pioneered new and novel ways to get public attention for Xerox, including backing public-service TV shows at a time when the company could barely afford the expense in order to convey an image of quality for a little-known brand.\u003cbr\u003e When a leading consulting firm told Xerox there was no real market for its proposed 412 xerography machine, Wilson and his aides took the report apart and discovered that the questions asked and the methodology were faulty. He plowed on.\u003cbr\u003e The 412, Xerox's first truly competitive product, would have to sell for $47,000 and was far too big for salespeople to lug around. Who would, or could, write a check of this size for a mere copying machine? But hey, someone suggested, who wouldn't pay a nickel to get rid of the messy carbon copy that was the curse of every office at the time? Wilson didn't hesitate: a nickel a copy it would be. Customers loved the seemingly cheap price, and orders mounted and remounted for the 412. To the customer's surprise and Xerox's delight, users were making far more copies of things than they did before the 412. The machine was so clean, fast and precise, it was an easy way to expand internal communication in the days before e-mail. In a year, some customers were spending more for copies than the machine would have cost. Xerox became a cash jackpot machine.\u003cbr\u003e Ellis's generally upbeat book has a sad ending. On his retirement in the mid-1960s, an ailing and tired Wilson made two horrible mistakes: He picked an incompetent successor and then failed to bequeath a strong board that could have reined in his successor's blunders. His successor threw away the chance to own the coming personal computer revolution and made disastrous billion-dollar investments in old industries. He lacked his predecessor's knack for embracing change. By then, Wilson was too ill to retake the reins. Xerox shriveled, and its bonds sank to junk status. Rescued by the present CEO, Ann Mulcahy, Xerox is doing well again, but it is no longer the shining symbol Wilson created.\u003cbr\u003e The author, Charley Ellis, is retired head of the consulting firm Greenwich Associates and serves as a Yale trustee and a director of the Vanguard funds. He knows a lot about business leadership, having consulted for and worked with many of the best practitioners. Among all of the business leaders he's known, and he's known hundreds, he puts Joe Wilson--whom he never met--over them all. The lessons here are clear and shining--both the good and the bad. (\u003ci\u003eForbes.com\u003c\/i\u003e, October 25, 2006)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTransforming family-owned Haloid Corp., which struggled in the shadow of hometown behemoth Eastman Kodak, into the globally recognized Xerox is an amazing accomplishment. But as Ellis's biography of Joe Wilson attests, Wilson's achievements ranged more widely and went much deeper than many gave him credit for. Ellis, author of 11 books and former financial industry consultant offers a heartfelt, if not artful, telling of the CEO's life story. He contends that Wilson embodied all of the qualities that leadership management books celebrate: integrity, foresight and the ability to inspire people to perform. He credits these attributes to helping Wilson so spectacularly realize his vision for his company; its employees; his alma mater, the University of Rochester; and the city and people of Rochester, N.Y. Ellis's telling starts off slow and is initially quite repetitive. But once Xerox is finally born, after years of setbacks, the story picks up. The real purpose for the detailed buildup appears toward the end, when credit for the last 20-odd years of corporate strife and ultimate success is given to the wrong person, Wilson's best friend and the company's corporate counsel. At that point, it becomes clear why Ellis was compelled to write this book so long after the company's rise and its true founder's demise.(Sept.) (\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, July 17, 2006)\u003c\/p\u003e   \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eCHARLES D. ELLIS\u003c\/b\u003e is a recognized expert on business management. For thirty years, he was managing partner of Greenwich Associates, the leading worldwide strategy consultant to the financial services industry, which he founded and where he developed close working relationships with senior executives at most of the major investment firms in North America, Asia, and Europe. His other activities include teaching the Investment Management course at both Yale School of Management and Harvard Business School; chairing CFA Institute, the investment professionals' organization; serving as a Director of Vanguard; advising some of the world's largest investing institutions; and chairing the investment committees at the Whitehead Institute and Yale University. He is one of ten individuals recognized by the investment profession for lifetime leadership. Among his eleven prior books is \u003ci\u003eCapital: The Story of Long-Term Investment Excellence\u003c\/i\u003e (Wiley).    \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJOE WILSON AND THE CREATION OF XEROX\u003c\/b\u003e  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJoe Wilson was that rare business leader who, like Henry Ford before him or Bill Gates since, literally changed the world in which he lived. Wilson's company, Xerox Corporation, introduced the first one-piece, plain paper photocopier in 1959, dramatically altering the way in which business was done and becoming so culturally ingrained that the term for photocopying is \"Xeroxing.\"  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYet Wilson was much more than just one of the twentieth century's most talented and accomplished business executives. Decades before a sense of social responsibility was considered vital to the success of a corporation, Joe Wilson was a driving force behind gender and racial equality, labor-management harmony, and the need for big business to understand and address the failures of our overall society.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJoe Wilson\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e and the Creation of Xerox\u003c\/i\u003e is the first book to tell the story of this deeply principled and talented leader. Written by Charles Ellis, the globally renowned business strategist and author of the investment classic \u003ci\u003eWinning the Loser's Game\u003c\/i\u003e, this inspirational and vastly entertaining book details:  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e \u003cli\u003eThe determination and entrepreneurial drive of Joe Wilson as he transformed the brilliant invention of Chester Carlson from near-certain oblivion to ubiquitous xerography\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eThe early growth years of Xerox—then called Haloid—and the programs Joe Wilson put in place to hire the most promising employees and seamlessly \"retire\" those who didn't share his vision and work ethic\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eThe many years of uncertainty and near-defeat through which Wilson led the team he was recruiting to create the company and the great products that drove Xerox's profits consistently upward at a faster rate for a longer number of years than any other company\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eThe legendary 914 copier, and how Wilson and other company executives bet their futures and fortunes on the unproven product that would soon make Xerox a household name\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWilson's hands-on work with minority leaders to provide education and opportunity to young African- Americans during the racially explosive 1960s\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eThe transition years, and how Joe Wilson carefully relinquished control of Xerox while remaining intimately involved in both its day-to-day and long-term growth\u003c\/li\u003e \u003c\/ul\u003e  \u003cp\u003eIn a business world in which intense competition is the norm, with old-fashioned integrity often the first casualty, Joe Wilson's life and legacy have established a gold standard of leadership ethics and excellence. \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJoe Wilson\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eand the Creation of Xerox\u003c\/i\u003e tells Wilson's story, from struggling college graduate to esteemed business leader, and provides a success template that will be valuable for business leaders of every type, in every industry.    \"If you run a business and aspire to make it great, you owe it to yourself to read \u003ci\u003eJoe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox\u003c\/i\u003e by Charles D. Ellis ($28, John Wiley \u0026amp; Sons, 2006) . . . . the book rewards the reader with dramatic accounts of how one great leader managed to influence change rather than just react to it . . . The author, Charley Ellis, is retired head of the consulting firm Greenwich Associates and serves as a Yale trustee and a director of the Vanguard funds. He knows a lot about business leadership, having consulted for and worked with many of the best practitioners. Among all of the business leaders he's known, and he's known hundreds, he puts Joe Wilson—whom he never met—over them all. The lessons here are clear and shining—both the good and the bad.\"\u003cbr\u003e —James Michaels, \u003ci\u003eForbes\u003c\/i\u003e  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"When the creator of Xerox described the inventor of xerography as an \"unreasonable man,\" he meant it as a compliment of the highest order. Business-management consultant and investment-management professor Charles D. Ellis notes that, after inventor Chester Carlson's death in 1968, Joe Wilson regularly lauded Carlson for his vital contributions to xerography and Xerox. Once, writes Ellis, Wilson alluded to an observation by George Bernard Shaw: \"All progress depends on the unreasonable man... because reasonable men accept the world as it is, while unreasonable men persist in adapting the world to them. Chester Carlson was splendidly unreasonable.\" Readers of this splendid biography will come away convinced that Wilson was even more unreasonable, in that positive sense, than Carlson. The unreasonable Carlson pursued the idea of \"electrophotography\" for decades, despite setbacks and discouragement from the scientific and business worlds. But, as Ellis makes clear, it was the even more unreasonable Wilson who took the risks with Carlson's idea that ultimately paid off in Xerox Corp.\"\u003cbr\u003e —Cecil Johnson, \u003ci\u003eFort Worth Star-Telegram\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Wiley","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47989490254053,"sku":"NP9780471998358","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780471998358.jpg?v=1761784312","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/joe-wilson-and-the-creation-of-xerox-isbn-9780471998358","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}