Xerox Corporation

US-based manufacturer of photocopiers, printers, and other DocumentProcessing? technologies.

Parent company of the famous Palo Alto Research Center (XeroxParc), which invented many key technologies of today:

Up until recently, one of the most horrendously mismanaged companies around. Consider how much profit Xerox has realized from the aformentioned technologies - nothing. Not only did Xerox fail to exploit the wonderful research done by XeroxParc, they nearly went bankrupt a few years ago. Became convinced that the only document-processing product that customers wanted was big-iron photocopiers; lost considerable marketshare to the likes of Canon and others who came up with more cost-effective solutions.

Also nailed by the SecuritiesAndExchangeCommission? for shoddy accounting practices.

Current management seems to have started a turnaround. Xerox is no longer the lumbering dinosaur that it was; though it still lumbers quite a bit.

True story. A good family friend of ours worked in the Color Printing and Imaging Division of TektronixInc, which was bought out by XeroxCorporation in 2000 (a transaction that worked out well for both companies). As a result, she went from working for Tek to working for Xerox.

Tektronix, like most companies its size, does have its share of bureaucracy; those who work there love to complain about it. (True for most companies, I suppose). Including this particular family friend

However, when she started working for Xerox and the "transition" started happening, she (and the other former Tekkies) got a rude awakening into what true bureaucracy is. The employees were given stacks of reading material to study, all describing in painstaking detail the numerous policies, processes, and procedures that are StandardOperatingProcedure? at Xerox. Compared to that, Tek was like a StartupCompany?.

Her comment: "Now I know why it's called the Document Company."

Xerox was pretty strong in the computing research field a few decades ago. (Witness XeroxParc where the mouse was invented.) Nowadays they have branched out into the office printing market, and are going after the consumer printing business. How much pure research they do these days is unknown.

I work at Tektronix and worked at CPID (Color Printing and Imaging Division) when it was sold to Xerox. The previous comment is quite true - we got buried in documents and bureaucracy. I couldn't get out of there fast enough and am happy to be back at the mother ship, Tektronix, where life is good.

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