How Xerox lost $150B

In the early ’80s, Xerox PARC was the epicenter of innovation.
They had every advantage: cash from copiers, cutting-edge R&D, and patents that could have redefined computing.

But there was one fatal flaw—R&D never connected to P&L.
Brilliant inventions stayed trapped in the lab.

John Warnock and Charles Geschke were done waiting.
In 1982, they left PARC, productized their page-description tech, and called the new company Adobe.

Today:

• Adobe: ~$156B market cap.

• Xerox: ~$0.7B.

That’s a $150B+ swing—driven by execution, not ideas.

Key takeaways for operators and founders:

1. Protect a “moonshot budget” (~10%).
Your core business pays the bills, but future bets keep you alive long-term.
If all you fund is maintenance, you’re already dying.

2. Ship early, iterate fast.
R&D that never ships isn’t innovation—it’s a morale drain.
Even a scrappy MVP in the market beats a polished product that never leaves the lab.

3. Vision stalls = talent walks.
High performers don’t wait for bureaucratic sign-offs.
If you don’t let them build, they’ll do it elsewhere—often as your competition.

Gut check:
Do your best ideas have a shipping schedule, or are they collecting digital dust in slide decks?
The answer could be the difference between becoming the next Adobe… or the next Xerox.

To building before talent walks,
Eric Siu

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