Sadoway is one of the world's leading geniuses in this field.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better
than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper
proposing reliable overnight delivery service.
(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981
"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."
-- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.
http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
As far as Smith and FedEx goes, according to Smith himself he wrote one paper that touched on the idea while an undergraduate. He doesn't remember what his grade was. The "C" notion came about, he says, because a reported asked him what his grade was and he said "I don’t know, probably made my usual C". [1]
[1] http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/inter...
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/kenolsen.asp
The quote attributed to Lord Kelvin is a significant paraphrasing of a letter he wrote in 1896: