Open

How Compaq Ended IBM's PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing

By: Rod Canion

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer

The story of Compaq is well-known: Three ex-Texas Instruments managers founded Compaq with modest venture funding. Just four years later, Compaq was on the Fortune 500 list, and, two years after that, they had exceeded $1 billion in annual revenue. No company had ever achieved these milestones so rapidly.

But few know the story behind the story. In 1982, when Compaq was founded, there was no software standardization, so every brand of personal computer required its own unique application software. Just eight years later, compatibility with the open PC standard had become ubiquitous, and it has continued to be for over two decades.

This didn’t happen by accident. Cofounder and then CEO Rod Canion and his team made a series of risky and daring decisions - often facing criticism and incredulity - that allowed the open PC standard marketplace to thrive and the incredible benefits of open computing to be realized.

A never-before-published insider account of Compaq’s extraordinary strategies and decisions, Open provides valuable lessons in leadership in times of crisis, management decision-making under the pressure of extraordinary growth, and the power of a unique, pervasive culture.

Open tells the incredible story of Compaq’s meteoric rise from humble beginnings to become the PC industry leader in just over a decade. Along the way, Compaq helped change the face of computing while establishing the foundation for today’s world of tablets and smart phones.

©2013 Rod Canion (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Neat story about an underdog in the PC market

Is the Narrator a text to speech program? Sounds artificial and stilted.
Story is good if you’ve lived through the times.

Interesting

Overall the book is exactly what the description says it is, it's the beginnings of Compaq, which is a pretty interesting story. The only downside is how short the book is considering the history it's covering, it really doesn't go into any depth on anything and moves along, in opinion, way too quickly. This book easily could have been 2-3x longer and I think it would have held the audience, but then again perhaps too much time had gone by by the time it was written and too much detail was lost by the author.

I'd hope before everyone involved with this is gone that you'd have someone come in and write the history of Compaq from a few different angles just to have that additional detail, because, again, the story is really interesting and really important from a tech standpoint.

Overall I'd give this book 4/5. The reader does a good professional job.

Uninspiring Lovefest with Little Substance

Reads more like cliff notes of a larger book by a super fanboy where Compaq is portrayed a hero with no flaws who handily dominates everyone.

At the end, he even seems to portray Compaq as a big reason for Apple's success.

Compaq the story of perfection

If you're building a company and you want to read about someone who did it in a very short time , with a lot of quality in mind this is a story MUST read.
This is a very good story; I love the idea of focusing in your company on one thing and committing to this thing to deliver unparapbble quality, speed, performance, and many others.
I love the story because it is also about the people developing something which was unreal that time, fighting with the big brand at the same time having a lot of luck in the process!.

The PC revolution was more than Apple and Microsof

Compaq at the end was not a favorable company but at its conception Compaq was simply amazing.

The audio editing of this book is lacking even used wrong words, repeated parts of sentences and cut off before a sentence was finished. The edit and narration completely changed a little more than half way through to a near perfect version. Not sure what happened.

The narrator was not a good fit for this book.