Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years[FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

Carroll, Paul B.; Mui, Chunka

Published by Portfolio / Penguin Group, New York, 2008

About this Item

As new condition yellow boards/black spine/gold spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped color illustrated dust jacket. Includes Praise for Billion Dollar Lessons; Authors' Dedications; Introduction: Can Fatal Strategic Flaws Only Be Recognized in Hindsight?; Epilogue: Two Revolutions; Acknowleddgments; Research Notes; Notes; Recommended Reading and Index. Illustrated with tables and a drawing. "This engaging book demonstrates how even very smart businesspeople can make very bad mistakes - and how we can learn from them and so avoid their fate." - Dr. Michael Hammer. "Billion-Dollar Lessons is an MBA degree in one read. The lessons to be learned from the parade of failed mergers and acquisitions the authors have studied are simple yet engaging and powerful. From creating devil's advocates to empowering more voices inside of companies, this book offers serious doses of explanation and hope." - Larry Kramer, founder, chairman and CEO of Marketwatch dot com and former president of digital media for CBA. "Baseball is a game of failure . but so is business. In baseball, go three for ten over a career and you're going to the Hall of Fame. In business, a 70 percent failure rate will get you into Paul and Chunka's sequel. This is a book about failures that can and should be avoided. Read, learn, win!" - Vice Admiral John G. Morgan, Jr., chief strategist of the U.S. Navy (August 2004-July 2008). "Welcome to Business Failure 101. In the 1960s, IBM CEO Tom Watson called an executive into his office after his venture lost $10 million. The man assumed he was being fired. Watson told him, "Fired? Hell, I spent $10 million educating you. I just want to be sure you learned the right lessons." In Billion-Dollar Lessons, Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui draw on research into more than 750 business failures to reveal the misguided tactics that mire companies over and over. There are thousands of books about successful companies but virtually none about the lessons to be learned from those that crash and burn. Lesson One: The Cold Hard Facts: Between 1981 and 2006, 423 major companies with combined assets totaling $1.5 trillion filed for bankruptcy. Hundreds more took huge write-offs, discontinued major operations, or were acquired under duress. Again and again, companies follow the same wrong-headed strategies. Tom Watson's $10 million lesson seems cheap by comparison. Lesson Two: Failure Patterns: Carroll and Mui found that the number one cause of failure was misguided strategy - not sloppy execution, poor leadership, or bad luck. These strategic errors fall into seven categories, including: Pursuing nonexistent synergies: Quaker Oats' purchase of Snapple was supposed to capitalize on distribution synergies but instead led to a $1.4 billion loss. Moving into an "adjacent" market that isn't really adjacent: Avon decided its "culture of caring" qualified it to operate retirement homes. Subsequent write-offs totaled $545 million. Buying more problems than efficiencies through misguided consolidation: Despite pioneering the discount department store, Ames flubbed consolidation efforts, landing in bankruptcy twice before eventually liquidating. Lesson Three: Avoiding the Same Mistakes: Billion-Dollar Lessons provides proven methods that managers, boards, and even investors can adopt to avoid making the same mistakes. It draws on vivid, off-the-beaten-track examples to help you thoroughly assess potentially disastrous strategies before they bring your company down. Required Reading: Think Billion-Dollar Lessons as the flip side of Good to Great, but just as eye opening and essential as that business classic. Billion-Dollar Lessons will keep you from going from good to gone." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years[FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]
• Publisher: Portfolio / Penguin Group, New York
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New