Don Estridge was born in 1937 in Jacksonville, Florida. He gained a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Florida. He worked for the army and then joined IBM, working in the 1960s at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The 1970s saw IBM dominate the mainframe computer arena, but smaller companies were nipping at its heels with mini-computers and home computers. IBM promoted Estridge to lead the team that developed its first mini-computer, the Series /1. It was not a great success and he was assigned a staff position. However, in 1980, he took charge of the IBM Entry Level Systems and was given the objective of developing an inexpensive personal computer to take on the upstarts like Atari, Apple and Commodore.
Estridge realised that he could not create a viable competitive product and bring it to market quickly, if he used standard IBM development processes. At that time, IBM maintained total control of all its manufacturing with proprietary designs from power supplies to integrated circuits to operating systems. If he followed the normal IBM procedures, the product would be far too expensive for the fast-growing consumer market.
Estridge decided to bypass the heavy-duty approach and, instead, to go outside the company for third-party components and software. Even more radically, Estridge opted for an ‘open architecture’. He published the specifications of the IBM PC, thus enabling a burgeoning industry of suppliers of add-ons, hardware and software products. The product included expansion card slots specifically to take external offerings.
‘When we started,’ Estridge said, ‘we were a dozen people who knew a little about personal computers.’ The engineers in his small team had all come from the world of large computers and the biggest task was to get them to think completely differently about computers. ‘The most important thing we learned was that how people reacted to a personal computer emotionally was almost more important than what they did with it,’ he recalled. ‘That was an entirely new lesson in computer design.’
In four months, Estridge and his team developed a prototype and, within one year, the IBM PC was on retail shelves, a record time for product development in the giant company. The product was launched in August 1981. Competitors initially were unworried because they were shipping higher specification machines of their own design, but the open architecture proved a key competitive advantage and the IBM product quickly came to dominate the market. Its success led to the formation of companies like Compaq and Dell, who specialised in ‘PC clone’ products.
Estridge was promoted several times at IBM and, in 1984, became vice president, manufacturing. He turned down a lucrative offer from Steve Jobs to become president of Apple Computers.
On 2 August 1985, Estridge and wife Mary Ann were killed when the plane they were travelling in crashed at Dallas. He was 48 years old. At the time of his death, the IBM PC group had grown to 10,000 employees and was grossing about $4.5 billion a year. If it had been a separate entity, it would have been the third largest computer company in the world behind IBM and DEC.
Tear up the rule book. Don Estridge broke all the standard operating procedures at IBM in order to ship a revolutionary product in record time. He decided that the only way to succeed was to break all the rules and move fast. What Estridge did was heresy within IBM, but it delivered dramatic results and he was applauded for it. Do not assume that big companies cannot be flexible – sometimes you have to be the rebel they need.
Accept that failure is part of the process. Not all Estridge’s ventures were successful. The Series /1 misfired. After the success of the PC, his team developed the PCjr home computer, which flopped. However, he was sanguine about it. ‘You have to take risks in this business,’ he said, ‘or it’s no fun.’
Design a platform not a product. The IBM PC was successful because its open architecture enabled companies and individuals to customise and adapt it to many varied uses. It became a platform for software and hardware developers. Try to develop something that others can build on and enhance. With luck, they will become supporters and evangelists.