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Back in 1992, Stan
Shih, the founder of Acer, presented what has become known as the “Stan
Shih Smile.” Stan drew a diagram that traced the conversion of
fundamental technologies from a process to a product—to a market. He said
back then that in the past, the return-on-investment looked approximately
like the yellow curve shown here. In earlier times, just about every major
ICT company had the same basic technology—say, 5 micron NMOS—and everyone was
building approximately the same product—a minicomputer. Data General,
Siemens, IBM, Digital, and so on. The most substantial portion of the ROI was attributable to the quality of the
design team you had that could take that fundamental technology and convert
it to a competitive minicomputer.
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