General Magic

By Bethany Coates, Andrew Rachleff
2007 | Case No. E273
Early one morning in September 1994, Marc Porat, CEO of technology start-up General Magic (GM), dropped his daughter off at elementary school and then reached for his personal intelligent communicator (PIC) to check messages. GM had created the PIC in collaboration with Apple, Sony, Motorola, AT&T and other partners. After a delay of two years, the first version of the hand-held electronic organizer had just been shipped to stores. Porat and his team celebrated their progress and then settled down to figure out how to improve both the second version of the product and their company’s process for getting it to market.
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