Slashdot Mirror
101 Dumbest Moments In Business
hhutkin writes "It's that time again. Business 2.0 posted their 101 Dumbest Moments in Business. Of course, they lambast Enron, but they also slam Ginger, a laptop computer made for the steering wheel of your car, Steve Ballmer dancing, and some other really dumb stuff from the past year."
33. "We've been doubling sales every 18 months. However, when you start from zero, it takes a long while." -- Stephen Yeo, a marketing director at Windows-terminal manufacturer Wyse, explaining his company's less-than-meteoric rise, to ZDNet UK
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Biggest famous mistake=Osborne's Interview 60 Minutes.
Mr Osborne is a multimillionaire with his portable computer (pre Compaq competition) and his Osborne 1 is famous, though not too high tech).
60 minutes asks him if he is rich enough and if Osborne 1 is good enough.
Osborne foolishly boasts " THE OSBORNE 1 is NOTHING COMPARED TO HOW GREATE THE OSBORNE TWO WILL BE!!!!!!!"
That boasts puts him out of business the next month practically.
Its is now called the Osborne syndrome.
Apple computer avoids this mistake.
Do you see the mistake?
Not one customer wanted to ever buy an Osborne 1... they all waited for an Osborne 2 that could never ship because the inventory was killing the company in unsold computers with no buyers.
One foolish public boast about new model.
Its one of histories top 100 mistakes, and its a silicon valley top 10 mistake.
If its not in the list then the list is not authoritative complete or correct.
They should consult this slashdot thread and read at "level 0".
people never moderate anymore.
That's exactly why I disabled "Third-party cookies" in my browser.
btw - did it say "Confucius ensues" back there?
--
(if you're still looking for the point, it was back there, in the post. </sig>)
Microsoft came in at a disappointing #7 with:
7. Last May, Citizens Against Government Waste, a group that received funding from Microsoft, is caught simulating a "grassroots" campaign to get state attorneys general to drop their antitrust suit against the software giant. One detail that gives the scheme away: Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.
Personally, I can think of many other, much more comical MS events...one of my personal favorites being this...
Anyone else with any votes for stupid MS trick of the year?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
You'd think people would prepare for this.
--Blair
Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.
Come on, give Microsoft a break. When you think about it, dead people know more about grass roots than any of us; so why shouldn't they be part of a grass roots campaign?
...but it appears to be slashdotted...
Once again: google is our friend!
Page:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Well, I know that doesn't look nice, but otherwise it's hard to post due to characters per line restrictions...
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
I know why Boston Market the restaurant chain failed. Analysts made up all sorts of reasons. But I a loyal customer know the truth.
Something so simple too.
They switched cleaning agents. I was a huge Boston Market fan. One day, I go in, and the place reeks like some kind of urine. I go across town to another store, it too reeks of urine.
Not everyone could smell it; my girlfriend did an investigation and found that most people only noticed it once it was pointed out--chicken smells sort of that way too. However, we routinely saw people leave from the smell, muttering under their breath, but not telling the manager. A handful with 'good smellers' couldn't even enter the door.
My girlfriend tracked down the smell to the cleaning agent they used for the floor..and oddly enough, the trays. She tried to tell employees. They would not listen; they couldn't smell anything..they had acclimated.
She told the managers. They humored her. But nothing changed. She went to several outlets across town; same story.
About a year and a half later, Boston market shut down its restaurants ostensibly because 'americans were changing their eating habits'..sails climbed, then fell off because 'americans had changed their eating patterns'
As I said, not everyone noticed the smell; but the subconcious is designed to avoid certain odors such as death and human waste.
I am certain the smelly cleaning agent was their real downfall.
The list focused on the top 101 business mistakes of last year.
people never moderate anymore.
Yeah, and they never read the articles, either.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/