Business

Predicting the future of business can be a challenging task, from novices to experts, CEO’s, Investment bankers, analysts, professors and investors all have tried it in the past. While some have been successful in doing it, many have fallen flat on their faces. I have compiled a few colossal failures and some that were just mere hiccups, for the experts and the companies they represent.

1.”The concept is interesting and well- formed, but in order to earn better than a “C”, the idea must be feasible.” A Yale university management professor in response to Fred smith’s paper proposing overnight delivery service. (Smith founded FedEx corp.)

2.”There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home”. Ken Olson, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

3.”I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

4.”We went to Hewlett-Packard and they said we don’t need you, you haven’t even graduated from college yet” Apple founder Steve Jobs on trying to get Hewlett interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

5.”Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” — Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

6.”These Google guys, they want to be billionaires and rock stars and go to conferences and all that. I don’t think they will be around running the company in two to three years”. Bill Gates in 2003

7.In February 2005, Microsoft unveils a new version of MSN search, developed at a cost of $100 million, in an attempt to take market share from Google. MSN’s share of Internet search traffic promptly drops by a full percentage point.

8.In 2005, H&R Block announces a review of its recent financial statements, estimating it will find discrepancies in its favor of about $19 million. Two months later it reveals that the review found $77 million in errors–in the other direction. The company explains that it had “insufficient resources” to identify and report complex transactions in its corporate tax accounting.

9.After complaints from animal-rights activists, Kraft Foods deletes an online animation for its Trolli Road Kill Gummi Candy that features animals amusingly caught in car headlights. The fruit-flavored Trolli candy, which comes in the shapes of squished snakes, squirrels, and chickens, is later discontinued.

10.”The effect of Disney and Pixar guessing wrong on this was actually not giant.”– Pixar CEO Steve Jobs, defending overly optimistic DVD sales forecasts. The animated-film studio sees second-quarter earnings drop 66 percent.

11.Ex-Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski receives 8-25 years in prison for misusing company funds. A few of the things he did with company dollar, spent 2 million on his ex-wife’s birthday party on an Italian island and a $6000 shower curtain.

12.”Everyday for six years we’ve been shucking and jiving for the amusement of a bunch of retards and you say we’re not suffering enough?” Suck .com last post on its website after receiving millions of dollars in funding from investors and Venture funds and then going belly up.

13.In a press release, Gradient writes that this case “is about the rights of investors to obtain information enabling them to make better investment decisions. Gradient will not be intimidated by those who don’t like our opinions and who want to strangle any and all negative comments with contentious litigation…” this is after overstock.com sues Gradient an independent research firm that it conspired to drive down its stock. Over the course of 2005, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne issued pronouncements about short-sellers who were driving the company’s stock into the ground. After listening to an Overstock conference call with investors in August, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban posted to his blog a list of the topics Byrne covered: “Miscreants; an unnamed Sith Lord he hoped the feds would bury under a prison; gay bath houses; whether he was gay, does cocaine, both, or neither; phone taps; phone lines misdirected to Mexico; arrested reporters; payoffs; conspiracies; crooks; egomaniacs; fools; paranoia; which newspapers are shills and for who; money laundering; his Irish temper; false identities; threats; intimidation; and private investigators. All in 61 minutes.” Cuban then short-sells 10,000 shares of Overstock.

14.Polaroid is sold to the Peters group after 3 years in bankruptcy. Chairman Jacques Nasser walks away with $12.8 million, CEO J. Michael Pocock gets $ 8.5 million meanwhile retirees lose their medical and life insurance benefits and only receive one time checks of $ 47.

While these are but a few of the really funny mistakes made by our predictors, you imagine if you were an investor or worked in the companies at the time when these events occurred, the results would have been really disastrous for you because we all know that those who suffer when company’s management make the wrong assumptions about their future and the industries they compete in is the Investors, employees and retirees, so after you have had your laugh maybe next time someone decides to gamble with your future you will be well prepared with all the information and tools necessary to make sure you are in control of what happens, it is by the way your future isn’t it.

Ronn Machio

ronnmachio@earlywarningmanual.com

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