It is time for me to test your high-tech and computer history by asking you to remember a Longmont, Colorado-based company called MiniScribe. The company was founded in 1980 and was developing (for that time) innovative hard drives. Though the company started to falter in the mid-1980s, Wall Street turn-around specialists were brought in to work their magic. The late 1980s and early 1990s were magical times for the high-tech industry – and in some cases, they were highly unethical times filled with fraud and deceit.
In 1989, MiniScribe raised the stakes of fraud to an entirely new level. MiniScribe, being unable to get Wall Street to loan their shaky company any more money for manufacturing their hard disk drives, decided on an interesting game of bait and switch.
The game worked like this: MiniScribe decided to stock their warehouses with inventory that wasn’t exactly inventory. The packages they decided to ship contained (ready for this?) pieces of brick. The thought was that they would recall the bricks as faulty merchandise and replace them with real real hard drives when funding had been secured for manufacturing. How could they do this? Because the thousands of bricks they shipped made it seem like the demand for their drives was huge. Why wouldn’t Wall Street want to loan money to a company that was seemingly turning around?
The scheme would fall through, of course, and resulted in huge fines and prison sentences. Why did they ship bricks? Because the company’s executives thought they could buy themselves the most precious commodity of all: time.
Enter Jason Kidd
Jason Kidd is the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, a formerly brilliant professional basketball player who, as head coach, is trying to turn around a team that has had its struggles. However, Mr. Kidd tried a strategy in a game against Los Angeles, on November 27, 2013, that reminded me of the guys at MiniScribe.
Out of time outs with 8.3 seconds left, and losing 96-94 to Los Angeles, Kidd wanted to find a way to buy himself some time to discuss strategy. He came up with what he thought was a solution. Holding a cup filled with ice, he told one of his players to bump him. The story gets a little hazy as to whether he was bumped or not, but the end result was that he dropped the cup spilling ice on the court and stopping the game.
He was found out, and was fined $50,000. At first, he denied he did anything wrong, that a player had hit him – perhaps on purpose, and then he said he had sweaty palms and accidentally dropped the cup, and finally he admitted he dropped the cup to buy the team some time. He was shipping bricks.
However, what is ethically disturbing is this quote that Mr. Kidd made to the Associated Press on November 29, 2013 as to why he did what he did:
“It’s about trying to win and those guys in that locker room, and I tried to put those guys in a position to get a basket, a good look and we did.”
What is real – and what isn’t
I think it’s important to understand the difference between the concept of winning and good ethics. I also believe it’s important to understand the difference between bad management and “buying time.” In the case of both MiniScribe and the Brooklyn Nets, bad management led to a lack of time.
MiniScribe’s problems didn’t start with shipping pieces of brick and cement; it started with the lack of a clear plan and their inability to anticipate the changing computer market. Jason Kidd intentionally spilling ice on the court with less than 10 seconds to go began at the start of the first quarter when he had all of his time-out’s available. It was bad clock management. In both cases, nothing was gained by trying to be clever or slick.
That leads me to ethics. MiniScribe and Jason Kidd intentionally chose the wrong ethical road in order to win. In both situations, they lost. That was in the short term. Long term, whenever anyone remembers the MiniScribe story or those associated with the company, they will think of packages filled with masonry. As for rookie coach Jason Kidd and his lack of being contrite, his legacy as a professional basketball player will now be clouded by his arrogance as a rule breaking coach. It is difficult to say to say if anyone will remember his actions, but it is easy enough to understand that his competition and the officials will always keep a watchful eye. They will most likely think of him as a cheater.
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