How did Boeing shift from an engineering culture, willing to bet everything on revolutionary technology, to one that prioritized the stock price over building safe airplanes? In this episode of “A Case Study in Corporate…
Leave a CommentNow for a completely different take on the Jaguar rebrand. While many have called it “the worst marketing decision they’d ever seen,” and declared it “brand suicide,” I believe it was one of the bravest…
Leave a CommentWhen the “Pepsi Challenge” taste test proved that people preferred Pepsi, Coca-Cola panicked and made one of the most disastrous decisions in corporate history – it changed its sacred formula. In the latest episode of…
Leave a CommentAtari was the company that pioneered the $300 billion video game industry and built a culture that gave designers the freedom to program the future. However, when Warner Communications bought Atari, they imposed a rigid…
Leave a CommentHow did the company that invented the Walkman get outplayed by a computer company with zero experience in music? The answer: Fear. In the latest episode of “A Case Study in Corporate Fear,” I unpack…
Leave a CommentCarrie Tolstedt was under intense pressure. As Senior Executive Vice President of Community Banking at Wells Fargo, she oversaw a division that mandated a cross-selling goal of eight products per customer by 2020. Despite internal…
Leave a CommentIn 2015, Marissa Mayer sat in her corner office at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale headquarters, surrounded by the purple walls she’d inherited from her predecessors, contemplating her next hire. Once valued at $125 billion and the most…
Leave a CommentIn December 1999, the Excite@Home boardroom grew quiet. George Bell, the CEO, had just turned down an offer that would later haunt the history of Silicon Valley. A small, struggling startup named Google was proposing…
Leave a CommentAs we embark on 2025, FEAR Incorporated would like to remind everyone that the greatest con in business isn’t Bernie Madoff or Theranos – it’s the lie companies tell themselves: “We don’t need to change;…
Leave a CommentThose who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
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