Enterprising Enterprises

Back in 1876, Western Union, then one of the leading companies in the world with an extensive U.S. telegraph network, got the chance to acquire the key patents behind Alexander Graham Bell’s “speaking telegraph.” However, because of a combination of corporate arrogance, head-in-the-sand engineering bias, and a real failure to see what might be, the dominant “communications” company of its day evaluated the opportunity and concluded in a now famous internal memo that “this ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”1 Initially, Western Union saw the telephone as a toy, not as a potential next wave in communications, because it was too busy enjoying the near-monopoly status of its existing nationwide telegraphy business. The following year the company recognized its error and had to pay a steep price to try to get back in the game accessing telephone technology developed by Thomas Edison.