When Giants Stumble - Hardcover

Sobel, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0735200599 ISBN 13: 9780735200593

Publisher: Prentice Hall Press, 1999

Synopsis

A respected business historian explores the failures of such companies as Schwinn, Korvette's, RCA, and Pabst, discussing the pivotal mistakes, management missteps, and product failures that led industry leading into precipitous and sometimes fatal declines. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Over the years, Robert Sobel (Dangerous Dreamers, For Want of a Nail, Coolidge) has discovered that you can learn as much from analyzing a business's failure as its success. In When Giants Stumble: Classic Business Blunders and How to Avoid Them, the Hofstra University business-history professor zeroes in on 15 devastating failures that either severely damaged companies or spelled their doom. "After all, medical people study diseases in order to learn how to keep people healthy. Why not apply the same logic to the study of business blunders?" For example, in a chapter on E.J. Korvette, Sobel explains how founder Eugene Ferkauf created a discount-marketing Goliath that tallied an astounding $1 million in sales when it opened in 1948--only to spiral into bankruptcy by 1980 due to poor hiring practices, undercapitalization, and ill-planned expansion. Other companies that come under Sobel's microscope include Osborne Computer, Montgomery Ward, Pan American World Airways, Schwinn, Pabst, and the NYSE. What was common to all of these companies was that their failure was preceded by great success, which should give many of today's movers and shakers plenty to think about. Recommended. --Howard Rothman

About the Author:

Robert Sobel is a Lawrence Stessin Distinguished Professor of Business History at Hofstra University. The author of over 40 books, including Dangerous Dreamers: The Financial Innovators from Charles Merrill to Michael Milken, he writes a monthly column on financial history for Barron's. He lives in Long Beach, New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prentice Hall Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0735200599
• ISBN 13: 9780735200593
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256