Top Seven Biggest Business Mistakes!

When a company, brand or product gets really big, it can be easy to imagine that company will remain in business forever. Yet businesses rise and fall over time, with millions and billions of dollars changing hands as executives try to stay current on what consumers want at any given time. Today let's look at some of the biggest business mistakes in history.

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[jrodriii]

“And even ‘Alphabet’, a term we all use today.”

This man’s deadpan delivery could kill haha.

[mattdegrosky]

I always marvel at how Sears isn't Amazon. They invented direct marketing and delivery of consumer goods of every variety and then didn't notice the internet.

[LouigiVerona]

I am a Product Manager and this video hit really close to home. The amount of times I've seen my and my peers' ideas be shot down by management based on completely shortsighted reasons is enormous. The amount of squandered opportunities due to management ignoring experts is immense.

[DanielH]

Funny you mention Lulu-Lemon and the sheer yoga pants disaster. I worked for a company that was tasked to repurpose the sheer yoga pants during that time. It was pretty depressing to throw brand new clothes that came from boxed pallets into a massive shredder all day. At least the company I worked for was responsible and found uses for most of the materials. The job required a criminal record check and the Canada Border Services agency came by regularly. New clothing would come from the United States and the CBSA had to determine the clothing was in fact destroyed and unit for resale. I never knew that Vendor duty drawbacks (essentially a refund on duties paid for goods) was such a big business until I worked for that company. I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and was not allowed to disclose the address of the facility or even the company name at the time. After that experience I find it so difficult to buy clothes.

[K.coordinated]

The funny thing about Kodak being afraid that digital cameras would cannibalize their film sales is that it was the correct fear but they should have been more afraid of somebody else beating them too it once they realized it was a possibility.

[williamlloyd]

You should do the same type of video focused on Japanese and then European companies biggest mistakes. These are epic business decisions that impacted the world.

[brendansmith]

3:27 important to mention Nokia as well, they became extremely complacent in the Symbian operating system. The company is a shell of its former share price, but maintains much better profitability than blackberry today.

[folcane]

Blackberry's story is similar to that of the popular high school quarterback that led his school to the high school championship but despite the promising career he had ended up as a shoe salesman at some mall...

[Metko]

Clearly the worst mistakes were made from Philips. They started TSMC and moved away and they also started ASML and also moved

[PwnySlaystation]

I live near the Blackberry/Research in Motion headquarters, and back when I was in college, they were BY FAR the biggest company hiring computer science graduates like me. They came to every job fair trying to recruit college students, and they were the "Apple" of graduate jobs. Everyone wanted to work there. Their fall was so quick it was crazy.
On a personal level, I still think Apple/Android manufacturers haven't made a comparable email device. Touch screens are still crap for typing and I'll die on this hill. Also it took more than a decade for iPhones to have even a tiny shred of the security functionality that blackberry had with its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). iPhones are STILL not as good as BES was. They lost business customers because executives wanted the latest cool phone, and they forced IT/security departments kicking and screaming to move to iPhone. Even though it was a worse business decision from a security/management perspective. Executives just LOVED those devices enough to fight for them. Was a strange time.

[BgLupu]

"This algorithm is too fast, we can't sell add revenue with this"

This is what happens when engineers are not involved in the decision process...

[advancetotabletop]

Those who have studied Disney management during the Eisner-Wells years vs. Eisner alone already know that once management stops having differences of opinion, either through yes men surrounding a single charismatic person, or groupthink, it‘s more prone to make mistakes affecting the entire company. Unfortunately, companies are usually intentionally structured this way.

[altair]

Kodak's case is a bit more complicated, while they failed to capitalise early on digital camera market (they did eventually, but they already lost market lead position), their true demise was due to the fact that cheap digital camera market vanished when cell phones started getting cameras.

[georgehart]

I really enjoyed this video. I lived during the times that all these mistakes occurred. I remember, in 1969, during junior high (now called middle school), taking a typing course in which we all learned on Classic Royal manual typewriters. Almost 20 years later, my father-in-law let me use his Mac to type out college report papers to submit. During those years, to watch a video you loaded a film reel on a Bell Howell projector. The first portable phone we got for my wife in 1988 was heavy. The attached battery was as heavy as a brick. When flip phones came out, we thought we were in heaven.

[alibizzle]

IMO Kodak's failure wasn't in digital cameras but rather in failing to leverage it's broader skillset in chemistry especially thin film chemistry in the way Fujifilm did

[kstark]

I found out about Olestra the hard way....or soft way as it were. I was working in a factory on a break eating chips. This was pre-smart phones so out of boredom I was reading the label. I was 19 at the time so I didn't exactly knew what "loose stools" meant and 20 minutes later I figured it out.

[TheScourge]

As a former Coke call center employee, I'll say the summary of New Coke is almost precisely how it got explained in my training. In fact, they can probably skip that part of the new hire training and link this video instead!

[snowbarsyk]

On a positive side, we now know, that 83% of population doesn't mind yoga in transparent pants!

[beardmonster]

I was just waiting for Xerox. It makes me wonder how much lack of technical knowledge and vision among people in management positions actually costs. As a software developer I've certainly had my fair share of facepalm moments regarding management cluelessness in that regard.

[robertfield]

"Bending over is a big part of yoga classes." Stop, please stop, for the love of God, I can't take this anymore. ;-)