This is an account of how the wealthiest and most powerful corporation in the world managed, within a few years in the 1980s, to throw away the advantages it had built up and maintained over many decades. IBM was not prepared for the personal computer revolution. It had maintained its dominance of the computer market not so much through innovation as through sheer marketing might. In the days of mainframe computers this was a successful strategy, but in the 1980s competitors such as Apple and Digital, and intermediaries such as Microsoft and Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems, stole a march on IBM. The book tells the human and technical story of its decline, leading to the announcement in 1992 of a $2.8 billion loss in the previous year. Robert Heller is the founder of Management Today. His other books include The Naked Manager, The Supermanagers, The Age of the Common Millionaire and The Superchiefs.