The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

Whenever this topic comes up there are always comments saying that SGI was taken by surprise by cheap hardware and if only they had seen it coming they could have prepared for it and managed it.

I was there around 97 (?) and remember everyone in the company being asked to read the book "The Innovator's Dilemma", which described exactly this situation - a high end company being overtaken by worse but cheaper competitors that improved year by year until they take the entire market. The point being that the company was extremely aware of what was happening. It was not taken by surprise. But in spite of that, it was still unable to respond.

Someone at SGI wrote a paper/web page/blog post titled "Pecked To Death By Ducks", claiming that x86 chips could never compete with SGI, and claiming to refute all the arguments that they could.

Then Intel introduced dual core (or maybe just two chips in one housing sharing a bus), and that generated a lot of buzz. So he wrote a follow-up titled "Pecked To Death By Ducks With Two Bills".

I don't recall the timing, though, how it related to the timing of asking everyone to read The Innovator's Dilemma. But at least some of the time, there was a pretty deep denial (or at least a pretty deep effort to keep the customers in denial).