>how they let a bunch of MBAs mismanage the company to the point that they squandered a two-decade long global monopoly on computing

A MBA Story.

Once upon a time, a MBA joined a company, worked his way from Finance Director to C grade. He could probably be described as pure breed MBA. He made friends with other rare MBA in the company and improve their career path along the way. Why? Because that is what you do, MBA always help another MBA. Somewhere along the line, the company's first non-technical / engineer MBA CEO was born.

As the company grow there are more MBAs, but not all MBAs are bad, you just need engineers and product people around these MBA. But some of these engineers or product genius [1] are pain in the ass to manage, and since many of them dont have MBA, they dont understand MBA speak and they get driven out of company decision making forum. So what happened was these product engineers got rotted out over the years even when they are C grade and out very publicly.

With leading edge tech company there is a very long lead time in their product R&D roadmap, so they were fine for the first few years, and continue to make record breaking results. Then MBA move his way up to the board and become chairman just in the time before his MBA CEO friend retired. Which means MBA Chairman gets to pick a new CEO again, guess which CEO would a MBA pick? Another MBA! Since MBA always help another MBA, new MBA CEO promoted more MBA to various rolls within the company. And MBA cult now officially dictate the company decision making.

Everything was great for a few more years, the market was growing, they have a monopoly and most important of all, they are doing great because they are MBA. At least that is what those MBA thought. Until one day cracks started appearing, MBA CEO thought it was all fine, but with time external pressure were piling in and the whole industry moved on. The market looked very differently to what company were 10 years ago. And somehow the MBA CEO already had an on going internal investigation which shows he had an inappropriate relationship and was let go. Which is the MBA speak of CEO being fired. And a recently arrived CFO was named as interim CEO while MBA Chairman and Board continue their CEO search. They could hire other MBA from outside the company, but since the leading edge tech company are a gigantic company with so many different specific domain knowledge and culture. The suitable choice outside the company are virtually nil. MBA Chairman looked at CFO, despite not being his first choice and is fairly new to the tech company, but he has a MBA! And the third MBA CEO was born.

The market is moving at a much faster pace than before. To give credit to the new MBA CEO he was trying very hard to steer the ship to a new path and direction. The tech company are already behind. These new direction and requirement are completely new, MBA middle management have no idea what they are doing and cant turn the ship fast enough. And while they are still turning, the industry has moved further along. I guess this is an example of MBA being killed by MBA.

Finally shareholder were so fed up, some of them asked the same question;

>how they mismanage the company to the point that they squandered a two-decade long global monopoly on computing, in an era where computing absolutely dominated global economic development.

There are very little choice of what shareholder could do. They need those product engineers back. And a new CEO. But the perfect candidate had a fallout with MBA Chairman a decade ago, the only option was to rally enough support to get rid of him. In the end, MBA Charimand retired, a new Board Chairman was named, and those product engineers are back to save the company.

As far as the MBA story goes, this is the end. We dont know what happen to the leading edge company, I guess that part is To be continued.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmFlOd0MGZg