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41 Comments to "The Stupidest Business Decisions in History"
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blm
April 15th, 2008 at
1:49 am
While I’m certain there are some dumb decisions in there, I also think it’s easy to point them out after the fact, but maybe not so easy beforehand.
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* Miss UNIVERSE
April 15th, 2008 at
2:35 am
You missed a real gem.
Google’s founders originally tried to sell the software to several tech companies before deciding to make a go of it on their own - because no one liked the Million dollar selling price they were seeking.
Altavista, Excite & Yahoo TURNED THEM DOWN IN 1997 :-O
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Skipweasel
April 15th, 2008 at
6:44 am
Would Microsoft have grown the way it did if Ross Perot had owned it? Like many things, these are imponderables. Perhaps the Beatles wouldn’t have been a success under a different label…
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empty-minded
April 15th, 2008 at
7:34 am
You gotta love Karma (or not, either way Karma wins).
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KT
April 15th, 2008 at
7:52 am
I think the date on the San Francisco Chronicle story is incorrect. By 1979 Woodward and Bernstein were well-known and celebrated for having broken the Watergate story 5 years earlier!
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bean
April 15th, 2008 at
8:05 am
When I was in college, I had to study a shareholder rights lawsuit that still sticks in my mind.
Henry Ford was sued by some of his biggest shareholders for constantly taking the massive profits of his company and reinvesting them in the company, rather than paying a dividend on stock. He lost the suit, and one of the plaintiffs used his winnings to start his own auto company.
That guy’s name was Chrysler.
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Robert
April 15th, 2008 at
8:56 am
A couple of years ago I was working for a startup that was seeking VC money. One of the VC’s we talked to admited to one serious mistake a number of years ago.
They turned down a small chain of coffee shops that was trying to go national. They could not see why anyone would pay $2 for a cup of coffee. Starbucks went elsewhere.
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bean
April 15th, 2008 at
9:24 am
Oops. I mistyped. I meant to say Dodge, not Chrysler.
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mark
April 15th, 2008 at
9:26 am
Forgot about the “new” coke.
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Thomas
April 15th, 2008 at
10:00 am
what about crystal pepsi?
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Tracy
April 15th, 2008 at
10:05 am
So that’s why you see MASH reruns on t.v. almost every day. Very interesting.
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weerdwolf69
April 15th, 2008 at
10:58 am
Ted Waite turned a South Dakota pasture into one of the largest most respected computer manufacturing centers in the world. He then hired a “business manager” to take the company the next step. The business manager strangled the help line, changed the marketing strategy, and moved the corporate headquarters to San Diego. Within 3 years, Gateway 2000 was a never again worth a crap laughing stock.
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Richard Jones
April 15th, 2008 at
11:19 am
I also think the Watergate story is wrong.
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Knute
April 15th, 2008 at
12:21 pm
Microsoft didn’t buy DOS, they bought QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for about $50K. It was a plagiarized version of Digital’s CP/M operating system. They turned around and licensed this OS to IBM, then later licensed to Compaq and other clone PC makers. In the end they wound up paying Digital damages, and paid off the Seattle man who “created” QDOS as well. Of course most of this has either been forgotten or buried…
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Rosi
April 15th, 2008 at
12:28 pm
I know a guy who was the drummer for The Animals (who sang the House of the Rising Sun) but left to start his own band. He works at the guitar shop down my road…
Also my grandparents used to have their own dentist clinic, and one day the Beatles (ALL of them) came in for some kind of emergency treatment or something along those lines. But this was before they were famous, so they didn’t think to get their autographs or a picture of them or anything… -
CheeseDuck
April 15th, 2008 at
2:39 pm
Ouch.
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graffiksguru
April 15th, 2008 at
4:25 pm
I liked the story, I think you had a typo in the Mash one though, I’m assuming you meant “#3″, instead of “$3″, not a big deal, I do it occasionally too.
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Alex
April 16th, 2008 at
2:01 am
Oops - I did mean #3, thanks graffiksguru! I blame these fat figners for these typos. Doh!
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laughing at your mistakes
April 16th, 2008 at
12:10 pm
Bill Gates never came up with DOS, he was unable to, he had to buy it from another man, as a result, Microsofts success comes from bill gates inability to produce anything at all, only buy other peoples innovations.
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mommy g
April 17th, 2008 at
7:42 am
i had read these in the 13th bathroom reader (we have them all in our “library”, haha) but it’s nice to see them here, too, so that people who don’t usually pick up books might read one!!
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Leon123
April 21st, 2008 at
2:11 pm
Mego was offered a chance to produce action figures for a new sci fi move but turned it down.
That movie was Star Wars.
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Matthew Hall
April 21st, 2008 at
11:05 pm
You forgot about not publishing Harry Potter, lots of people turned down the series.
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ltwally
April 21st, 2008 at
11:10 pm
If memory serves, Microsoft bought CP/M (which became DOS) for a meger $40,000. Digital Research didn’t really lose out, as Microsoft screwed the creator of CP/M and probably wanted to screw over Digital Research as well.
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maki
April 22nd, 2008 at
1:28 am
not surprising
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zarathustra98
April 22nd, 2008 at
2:06 am
Can we not forget New Coke!
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elpumpy
April 22nd, 2008 at
3:06 am
@ltwally
MS never bought CP/M, CP/M was Digital Research’s operating system. Knute has it right. -
thewisemonkey7
April 22nd, 2008 at
3:49 am
The winner has to be Gerald Ratner, former CEO of Ratners Group jewellers (now Signet Group). He said, about his own products:
“We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, “How can you sell this for such a low price?” I say, because it’s total crap.”
This nearly bankrupted the company. XD
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Eric
April 22nd, 2008 at
8:18 am
HP turned down the Apple I.
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pylenyh
April 22nd, 2008 at
9:01 am
What about Xerox PARC? They had PCs, GUI, Email, everything way before MS or Apple. The execs said it was all useless and would never come to anything. They then demonstrated it to Steve Jobs and he stole all the ideas.
As soon as I saw this I expected to see that at the top. BAD NERDS! BAD!
Dummies
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Chris
April 22nd, 2008 at
9:10 am
Yeah these are easy to bash now, back in the front seat at the time? Not so easy. Yeah google tried to sell to excite/yahoo, etc., but think what they were asking. For a million we’ll give you a search engine. Umm, “we already have that!”, “yeah but ours is better”, “um, yeah right get out of here!”.
No one has a time machine…
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Computer Repair
April 22nd, 2008 at
9:50 am
Bill gates never made his own stuff. Everything was also bought or mostly stolen from other companies or small time programmers. One reason why I will never buy a ford. They never innovate, only copy. Kind of like Microsoft.
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Drewbot
April 22nd, 2008 at
10:57 am
Let it be known that Schlitz has released its original formula in long-neck bottles, and it is being sold in ten Chicago venues. I think they are testing to see how it sells. I tried it at Schuba’s, and it was really good.
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Masodark
April 22nd, 2008 at
12:40 pm
What about New Coke? How did that not make the list?
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Tim
April 22nd, 2008 at
2:47 pm
What about the publisher(s) that turned down J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books? Bet the person(s) who turned her away are no longer employed!
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Patrick
April 22nd, 2008 at
7:32 pm
To continue The Beatles-EMI story, it was largely The Beatles’ commercial success at EMI that helped fund EMI’s Central Research Laboratories division. It was there at EMI’s laboratories that the CT Scanner was invented (originally called the EMI Scanner). So you can almost say that Decca Records turning down The Beatles was one of the worst business decisions in history but indirectly, one of the best medical decisions in history as well.
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me
April 23rd, 2008 at
8:11 am
How about Xerox allowing Apple to reach into their closet of inventions which would never go anywhere, and come out with the mouse. No charge.
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gerard pawling
April 25th, 2008 at
7:21 pm
how about DIAGEO scouping up UNITED BRANDS for the unlimate coup?
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Geoff
April 28th, 2008 at
1:07 pm
The story about Perot and Gates was a missed opportunity. Perot’s most notorious mistake involved a meeting with Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus. They had gotten Perot to agree to buy a large block of their company and to provide further financing for growth and development. The deal came down to discussing executive perks, particularly cars. Marcus wanted Perot to simply pay off the 6yr old Cadillac he was driving. Perot told him to get a new Chevy since, “my people don’t drive Cadillacs”. The difference would have only been a few thousand more for the Chevy, but it was money that didn’t need to be spent. The discussion broke down, leading Blank and Marcus to walk out and develop their company on their own. You may have heard of it: Home Depot. An investment of less than $20million would have netted Perot more than $10billion, but he wanted to split hairs between a used Caddy and a new Chevy. Talk about value shopping…
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Ev Beran
May 1st, 2008 at
10:59 am
See also HP’s rejection of LCD displays in favor of LED’s for their hand held calculators. (Homework left to the student)
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Blog Quiz
May 4th, 2008 at
11:12 pm
I wonder if the guys who turned down the beatles got fired
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Richard
May 13th, 2008 at
6:35 pm
Be careful what you believe; some of these stories aren’t true or are mis-remembered/reported. An example right at the (current) bottom: As a hardware designer in the late ’70s, I can tell you that liquid crystal displays (LCDs) didn’t exist as an option when HP started making digital calculators. They went with LEDs because that’s what was available at the time for a reasonable cost. …If there’s a back-story wherein HP turned down the opportunity to be the first to use the LCD, it would STILL have to be something more than ten years after they were already making the LED-display calculators…
R
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