How a board clueless about the workings of its company can send it to death: The Downfall of Borland
rands
 @rands
14 Jun 2015
Borland's death spiral began when it turned away from what it knew best to chase a unicorn it knew nothing about: quora.com/Why-did-Borland-fa…
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@pvblivs @rands IMHO it was at least partly a lack of execution
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@ewolff you probably know better then I
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@pvblivs i.e. once success or failure is apparent it is easy to say "Look at those stupid mistakes / great decisions"
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@ewolff I just remember that Borland had some great tools and that it disappeared suddenly. I don’t really have a perspective
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@pvblivs Borland had a great Java EE Application Server. Eclipse eventually killed JBuilder. I guess Microsoft's competition killed Delphi.
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Replying to @ewolff
@ewolff @pvblivs I think the Quora poster is exactly right. Borland’s decline started around the time it renamed itself to Inprise.

Jun 14, 2015 Β· 8:48 AM UTC

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Replying to @stilkov
@stilkov @pvblivs why is a lack of execution of the new strategy excluded as the reason for failure?
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@ewolff @pvblivs Of course hindsight is easy, but why abandon a market you excel in and exchange it for a more competitive one?
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more replies
Replying to @stilkov
@stilkov @pvblivs ...but the office suite was competing against Microsoft and loosing. And the development tools became Freeware.
Replying to @stilkov
@stilkov @pvblivs because lack of execution was what I saw there. Technically Inprise's solutions were superior to e.g. BEA.