Remember when IBM got their supercomputer Watson on Jeopardy to completely trounce the best humans who ever competed? Where IBM got 30 minutes of prime time air, 3 nights in a row, with countless articles written about the challenge? Where IBM got to showcase it’s natural language search and answer capabilities for the entire nation and world?
I do, I also remember that they didn’t launch a Watson based product until 2 years after they were on the show, and that was limited to a small piece of the medical industry. Great job guys, way to leverage this opportunity.
Years ago, I read a business book called In Search of Excellence (about what made certain companies successful) and one of the lessons in the book was that companies should “stick to their knitting,” or not get far afield of their core business. So if Burpee’s core business is growing and selling seeds, it was a mistake for them to think they could get into growing and selling live plants. Similarly, Kodak may not have been mistaken for not taking advantage of inventing digital photography, since that’s outside its core business of making and selling film. (On the other hand, Kodak did become chemicals experts, which is why Eastman Chemical is still a successful company.)
Jamie Kellner was appointed head of Turner Broadcasting and he decided to cancel both WCW shows because he thought they did NOT fit the image he wanted TNT and TBS to portray.
Without the shows or TV deal WCW value dropped considerably and allowed its competitor WWF to buy them at a bargain price.
It also should be mentioned that WCW had been mismanaged for years and had been losing millions of dollars. A list of stupid things they did can be found here:
It assumes that the hit to the company’s image, the costs to roll out New Coke, and the costs to reintroduce Coca Cola Classic are all worth a tiny tweak to the flavor profile.
I suspect that those costs were COLOSSAL. Not the kind of thing a company would do deliberately for something like a minor flavor tweak. They could have accomplished a flavor change easily by just tweaking the formula in minuscule amounts over time- people may have perceived something as “off”, but not off enough to suspect anything. Over the course of a few years, they could have changed out the flavor without actually having had any sort of press release, etc…
There are whole books devoted to the New Coke decision, along with massive treatment in every history of the company.
So many online posters everywhere prefer to make up stuff rather than read actual journalism and history. It’s like the readers are surrounded by people suffering from the black plague and making every effort to spread it to us.
When was this? I’ve only been renting cars regularly for a decade or so, long since they were acquired by Enterprise Holdings. And apparently they introduced counter bypass in 2005. I wonder if they were the first to do that and, if not, who beat them too it.
Getting a rental in some airports can be faster than getting a taxi or Uber/Lyft. I can’t imagine what a nightmare that used to be.
Back in the olden days, there was almost always a line of taxis waiting outside baggage claim. Getting one was simply a matter of walking out the door. Rentals were for people who needed a car for several days. They were always a long hassle, even when the lines were short.
The Snopes article Beowulff posted says at the end,
As for the debacle’s being a deliberate marketing ploy, Donald Keough said: “Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart.”
So, no, this wasn’t some 4D chess move by Coca-Cola. They just made a mistake.
In the early days of personal computing, one of the leading operating systems was CP/M, supplied by Digital Research (a company based in Pacific Grove, CA). IBM was working on their first PC, and rather than make their own operating system, they approached Microsoft, which at the time was a small company whose main product was a Basic interpreter. Bill Gates told IBM that they didn’t have an OS, and suggested that they approach Digital Research.
IBM tried to reach a deal with Digital Research, but they never reached an agreement. Talks stalled initially over a question of a non-disclosure agreement that IBM wanted from Digital Research. There were also questions of whether IBM would own the OS, or would pay royalties, and whether Digital Research could meet IBM’s schedule. In any case, negotiations didn’t go well, so IBM gave up on Digital Research.
IBM re-approached Microsoft, who was more receptive to a deal this time. Rather than developing a new OS, Microsoft licensed an existing one from Seattle Computer Products. Eventually, Microsoft bought the OS for $50,000. That was the start of DOS, which eventually became Windows.
IBM was the dominant force in the computer industry at the time. Digital Research was tiny by comparison. The leaders of Digital Research should have done whatever they could to reach a deal with IBM. In 1991, Novell bought Digital Research for $80 million. By that time, Microsoft’s market cap was in the billions.
Why? Examples abound of companies that got hung up on what “their business” was, and didn’t see the writing on the wall about how their industries were changing. Or who backed the wrong horse because they misinterpeted the information they had gathered.
An example I saw recently from a friend on Facebook. In January he posted that a new restaurant was opening to replace another in a strip mall by him. It was a “gourmet” sub shop. He said that just by looking at their menu he predicted they would not last long. Every sub was only available as a foot long. No half subs available. And they all came loaded with predetermined ingredients with the strict message “ABSOLUTELY NO SUBSTITUTIONS OR ALTERATIONS”. Every sub ranged in price from $17-$20.
In May he commented in his own post and attached a “Out of Business” screengrab from their page commenting “Well that didn’t take long”.
Funny, sounds like Dive!, one of the worst places I’ve ever eaten.
I do remember a Mexican restaurant in south Florida that had a successful small chain and absolutely lost it when they tried to go way upscale and also add in Miami ‘attitude’ for the service.
One of the very few times I’ve left zero tip and never returned.
I remember that book. At the time it came out, there was an idea that all business management was the same, and that business executives didn’t need to know the operational details of running a company. This led to things like AMF acquiring Harley-Davidson.
Digital photography was not far from what Kodak was already doing. Not only did they fail to capitalize on their invention, they failed to respond to the digital revolution in any significant way until it was too late.
I don’t think it was a terrible idea for Burpee to buy Heronswood. Selling live plants is a natural complement to selling seeds. It could have worked if they had left the operations of Heronswood alone until they learned something about it.
On that note, the president of Baldwin Locomotive Works famously said something to the affect of he predicted American railroads would still be using steam locomotives until at least 1980, and kept the company committed to building primarily steam locomotives. By the time it became blindingly obvious that steam was a dead end Baldwin did introduce some diesel models, but by then it was too late and new players like GM’s EMD division had already captured most of the market.
