cover image Prophets in the Dark: How Xerox Reinvented Itself and Beat Back the Japanese

Prophets in the Dark: How Xerox Reinvented Itself and Beat Back the Japanese

David Kearns, Sunny Kleinfield, David Mauler. HarperCollins Publishers, $22.5 (334pp) ISBN 978-0-88730-564-1

Former Xerox CEO Kearns and business consultant Nadler here relate how Xerox marketed the exclusively patented plain-paper copying machine into a billion-dollar business in the 1960s, then became complacent and fell monumentally behind world competition by the early '80s. But under Kearns's leadership and a successfully executed program of product and service quality, Xerox became ``the first major American company targeted by the Japanese to regain market share from them.'' Readers may be surprised to learn that quality based on customer satisfaction is an unusual manufacturing and marketing concept, and that such a strategy contributed to Xerox's resurrection. This inside look at the workings of a giant international corporation is eminently readable and informative. 50,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo; author tour. (June)