Once Xerox’s management recognized the magnitude of the threat from the mew entrants, it belatedly but aggressively launched a series of quality programs designed to beat the Japanese at their own game.
These initiatives did stem Xerox’s share loss, and the company’s victory over the Japanese was trumpeted in books with titles like Xerox: American Samurai.
The focus on beating the Japanese, however, distracted Xerox’s management from the emerging battle for the personal computer.
At the time, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center was pioneering several of the technologies that sparked the personal computer revolution, including the graphical user interface and the mouse.
But Xerox was unable to capitalize on the new opportunities because they lay outside its strategic frames.