71–76 of 76 posts
Commodore, well Irving Gould, making Medhi Ali CEO. Or even employing the guy at all. IBM selling Thinkpads to Lenovo. Gerald Ratner, CEO of the Ratner Group, becoming famous for the "Ratner Effect" which destroyed the group and his career. They had 1,000+ stores and multiple brands in UK and US. He gave a speech to the IoD London in 91 that included "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's…
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The Beatles were a dead letter[1] by around 1980. The had a significant renaissance in the '90s - kids re-buying their parents' records. If you are my age, the Beatles were "the band Paul played in before Wings." [1] except in certain radio markets in the US. At the time, you had Brill building songwriters feeding generic groups organized by producer. It looked like a more robust "supply chain" than the business mode…
Wow, I just learned a lot about Muscle Shoals. Thanks. Didn't realize that the Black Keys recorded Brothers there, let alone the history of the place. I just had no idea!
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> IBM selling Thinkpads to Lenovo. As much as I dislike the direction Lenovo took with the brand… IBM shed a branch that was turning a massive loss because of IBM's management, and now Lenovo is the second-largest laptop manufacturer in the world and turning massive profits with the brand and the massive amount of spin-off consumer products. I can't imagine IBM being able to do either themselves.
So it is a double fail for IBM, not just bad decision, but also a badly managed company?
My vote goes to Bayer for knowingly and willingly selling H.I.V tainted medicine in the 1980s just to get rid of their inventory, not caring about the hundreds or thousands of people they infected. Possibly sadder is that the FDA actively helped Bayer to try and cover the whole thing up. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/business/2-paths-of-bayer-...
The HIV/AIDS hypothesis is a media hoax initiated by Felix Gallo, a convicted cancer fraudster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood...
I believe you are probably making a reference to something completely unrelated.
As recently as 2009, Nokia was estimated by Interbrand to be one of the top 5 global brands [1]. Interbrand's guesstimate at the monetary value rated "Nokia" as being worth over two times as much as "Apple". Just four years later, in 2013, Nokia had lost 80% of its value and Apple's brand was estimated to be worth about 13 times more. Such a tremendous collapse for a global brand seems unprecedented. (And no, it wasn…
I'd been a very happy and loyal Nokia cellphone user for about 10 years up to 2008. When the beautiful-looking N96[1] was announced early that year, I excitedly signed up to be notified of availability, and waited expectantly for a call or email. I never heard anything. A few months later, the iPhone hit the market in Australia. I bought one shortly after, and have used only iPhones ever since. Could they have done a…
I'd been a Windows Mobile enthusiast for years - even though they had unaccelerated display drivers and were for all intents and purposes crap they had proper calendars, task lists etc.
For simple phone I loved Nokias, and owned at least 9 of them. Rugged, reliable, they were brilliant. But at the time the Windows Mobile stuff were something nebulous called 'smartphones', whereas the Nokia ones were 'phones'. These things were very distinct and different at the time. A Nokia was a great phone, it lasted 6 days on battery and you could type whilst driving (yeah) from muscle memory.
The iPhone came and blew this up. It was a smartphone, it updated the screen at 60fps, it was done properly, it synced your calendar etc and like the Nokia it was a fucking good phone. Windows Mobile was shit for too long and paid the price, as was Nokia - but for very different reasons.
Nowadays I can't stand Apple and their products, but you have to respect how they sorted the crap out of the smartphone and phone markets and gave us a whole new market that has pretty much changed the world.
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Companies today don't care about their workers either, with the possible exception of B corps, which there aren't enough of (yet!) to be statistically relevant.
The last thing I want a company to do for me is care about me. I see what they do to things they have to care about. Benign neglect, please.