Xerox Wikipédia =link= -

Xerox was blindsided. Its costs were high, its product line was outdated, and its quality had declined. By the early 1980s, Xerox’s market share in copiers had collapsed from nearly 100% to around 40%. The company faced a near-death experience.

However, this pivot left the original hardware business weakened. The rise of the "paperless office" – ironically enabled by the scanning and digital workflow technologies Xerox had helped create – steadily eroded the demand for printing and copying. xerox wikipédia

However, in a moment of visionary genius (or institutional irony), Xerox created one of history’s most influential research centers. In 1970, they established the in California. PARC’s mission was to explore the "architecture of information." Xerox was blindsided

I. The Birth of an Icon (1906–1959) The story of Xerox begins not with copying, but with photographic paper. In 1906, The Haloid Photographic Company was founded in Rochester, New York, manufacturing photographic paper and equipment. For decades, it was a small, regional player in the shadow of Eastman Kodak. The company faced a near-death experience

The company’s destiny changed in 1938 when a patent attorney and part-time inventor, , invented electrophotography . Frustrated with the laborious process of carbon copying, Carlson created a dry, electrostatic method for reproducing images. He famously used a zinc plate covered with sulfur, a handkerchief, heat, and a static charge to create the first "copy" (the word "10-22-38 Astoria" was written on a glass slide). After being rejected by over 20 companies (including IBM and GE), Haloid took a chance on the fledgling technology.

The response was a multi-billion dollar loan, asset sales (selling off its stake in Fuji Xerox, which was painful), and a massive layoff of 20,000 employees. But the darkest chapter was the . To hide operational problems and meet Wall Street expectations, Xerox executives had manipulated its leasing revenue accounting. In 2002, the SEC charged Xerox with fraudulently accelerating the recognition of equipment revenue by over $3 billion and inflating pre-tax earnings by $1.5 billion. The company paid a $10 million fine, restated five years of financial results, and its auditor, KPMG, was also sanctioned. The scandal was a humiliation. V. The Modern Era: Services, Fujifilm, and the End of an Era (2002–2024) Under Anne Mulcahy (CEO 2001-2009, the first woman to lead Xerox), the company physically and financially stabilized. She is widely credited with saving Xerox from bankruptcy. Her successor, Ursula Burns (CEO 2009-2016), was the first Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. Burns pivoted the company aggressively away from hardware and toward business services.