Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street
By John Books
This is a business classic, in depth details on classic business, instead of how to’s.
Great opportunity to see what went right and what went wrong. I read this was a book Bill Gates had received, and really enjoyed.
What I enjoyed most.
The practical points that can be applied by any size of business…in any industry…in up, down, and flat markets.
Most of us can identify that investors make decisions more by their mood than their own research.
But how could Ford get the Edsel so wrong? How can you miscalculate the market that badly? Turns out Ford didn’t really miscalculate the market in 1955 when they started work on the Edsel. By the time car came on market in 1958 the market had swung to smaller less expensive cars. Sure made me reflect on some of our products that didn’t work as well as we thought. Sure enough, we had not paid as much attention to market shifts as we should have while we were coming to market. More importantly I picked up valuable pointers on how to avoid this in future.
There was also more, Edsel was made poorly. Recent years number of major companies have brought out products that performed far below expectations. Samsung with exploding batteries in cell phones that caused fires. Recently the 2 Boeing 737 crashes.
Big business has to pay more attention to subcontractor testing of components. Those of us with smaller companies, whether we carry products or offer services, must be aware on where breakdowns can occur, whether product delivery, issues in the cloud, or way we present in social media and on our websites.
Edsel story reminded me of importance of realistic expectations…and importance of continuously aligning our expectations with the market…last how are market expectations lining up with product or service we are delivering? What’s changes since we thought of this?
Story about Xerox meteor rise and fall clearly present importance of knowing your business cycles. These are just 2 of the twelve.
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