Why Companies Fail : The 10 Big Reasons Businesses Crumble, and How to Keep Yours Strong and Solid

by Ingebretsen, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780761563747
• ISBN10: 0761563741
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-05-01
• Publisher: Crown

Summary

At the height of the global bull market a few years ago, business giant Kmart stumbled, going from one of the most admired companies to one of the largest bankruptcies in history. The same fate befell several seemingly impenetrable corporation, such as Enron, WorldCom, Polaroid, and others. Were these fantastic failures caused by a fickle stock market and a turbulent economy? Did they fall victim to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s? Not according to business journalist Mark Ingebretsen inWhy Companies Fail. As you'll discover in this groundbreaking book, all of these companies exhibited one or more of the ten characteristics of a doomed companycharacteristics that have been shared by failed companies for decades. Kmart, Enron, WorldCom, and other corporations might have been saved if their executives had recognized sooner that their companies were exhibiting one or more of these characteristics. Ingebretsen, with the help of some of the world's most noted business management experts from the Turnaround Management Association, describes in startling detail each of the ten big reasons companies fail, including: Letting stock price dictate strategy Ignoring customers Fighting wars of attrition Innovating too much or too little And more Inside these pages, you'll discover practical methods for identifying these fatal characteristics in your own organization and preventing them from leading to failure. No matter what the size of your company, the lessons inWhy Companies Failcould be the difference between long-lasting success and sudden flameout. And before any company can go from good to great, it's got to be on the right track in the first place. This valuable guide will show you how.

Author Biography

Mark Ingebretsen pens the "The Daily Scan" column for the Wall Street Journal Online.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
The Deadly Spiral	p. 1
Early Warning Signs	p. 23
More Early Warning Signs	p. 39
When Stock Price Dictates Strategy	p. 59
Growing Too Fast	p. 75
Ignoring Paradigm Shifts	p. 85
Ignoring Customers	p. 111
Fighting Wars of Attrition	p. 131
Ignoring Liabilities, Threats, and Crises	p. 143
Innovating Too Much and Too Little	p. 163
Family Businesses and Poor Succession Planning	p. 181
Failed Synergies	p. 199
Greed and Arrogance	p. 213
Future Challenges	p. 227
In Search of a Failure-Proof Strategy	p. 243
Notes	p. 263
Index	p. 277
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.