20 Of The Biggest Business Mistakes in History

We all make mistakes; it’s an essential part of human nature. It is a known fact but what can we learn from ours and others’ mistakes? Let’s elaborate on it in a simple way. You are unable to successfully run a business if you don’t learn from past mistakes. It is not important that you have to be wrong to learn from the mistakes, you can go through history and prevent yourself from doing the same blunders. The plain truth is unless you repeat the same old mistake you won’t learn. Many successful businessmen do blunders and take responsibility by accepting the mistakes. Some blunders are inevitable. You have to go through a difficult time to rise up again with full strength! Here twenty biggest mistakes and blunder are mentioned briefly that are ever made by businesses. You are planning to initiate your startup, have a look at these mistakes to avoid any hostile situations.

1- Coca-Cola Took a Decision about Changing the Old Formula
We all know about coca-cola. In the previous century, the company in order to compete in the market decided to change its old formula for a better and smoother taste and named it as new coke. The new coke was proved out to be a total failure.

2- Harry Potter was Rejected by Publishers
One of the biggest blunder ever made by the business was London publishers. Several publishers of London rejected the harry potter pitch written by Joanne Rowling.

3- The Excite Turned Down The Google Offer
The CEO of a popular search engine Excite was offered less cost to purchase Google. Turning down this offer was the biggest mistake as later excite was bought by ask.com. And now Google is the biggest search engine in the world.

4- Blockbuster Filed for Bankruptcy after Refusing Netflix Offer
A much-known video rental store of previous era Blockbuster turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix. Blockbuster is now no longer competing in the market. Laughing at Netflix’s offer was the biggest blunder of Blockbuster.

5- The New Model of Ford named EDSEL Caused millions in Losses
Without doing market research and knowing customer demand, the ford company launched a new car model with an incompetent price. The car didn’t gain popularity and caused million in losses.

6- M&M Declined the Opportunity to Become Famous Through E.T
The Reese’ pieces chocolate gained popularity when M&M refused to be a part of the E.T movie. The movie producer approached Mars incorporated for M&M use in the movie but got rejected.

7- JCpenny Lost Customers Due to Inefficient Plans JCPenney did the biggest blunder by removing discount prices on departmental stores. Many customers stopped doing shopping there due to fair pricing and no discount tag.

8- Conversational Chatbot Failure by Microsoft
The biggest blunder by Microsoft Company was introducing an artificial intelligence-based chatbot tay that learned foul language over the internet. The company had to silence it to save its reputation.

9- Electronic Arts Gifted Knuckles as Promotion
This was the biggest blunder made by Electronic arts American video game company. They sent people gifts with knuckles in the box as promotion of the game “Godfather”. Later realizing that it was illegal the gist was backed to the company.

10- Quaker Oats Company Losses in Billion Due to Snapple
Quakers suffered losses in billions due to fear of competition. They bought Snapple to increase the sale. But this decision came out as wrong.

11- Motorola Failed to Bring up an Innovative Idea
Motorola was popular among customers but afterward, competitors such as iPhone came up with strong innovative ideas and lowered the Motorola Company.

12- NASA Lost Million Due to Miscalculation
The Mars Climate Orbiter lost in the space due to miscalculating measurement by NASA because the company that designed the orbiter did not present acceleration speed in metric units.

12- Controlled Burn Turn into the Uncontrolled Burn
In Mexico to avoid wildfires, the controlled burn idea was used that became wild and damaged 48000 acres of land that almost cost one billion.

13- Costly Partnership of Daimler-Chrysler
This partnership resulted in a huge loss as the Daimler-Chrysler style did not share equal sales. Daimler Benz had to sell Chrysler share.

14- The New Bridge of Millennium Cost a Million
The engineers didn’t realize the bridge capability to carry heavy traffic and resulted in the shutdown of the bridge after a few hours of opening. It cost an additional million.

15- AOL Failed to Merge with Time Warner
The merger between these two companies failed because they didn’t get along well and the difference between these two companies causes losses in billion.

16- Japan Stock Market Error Cost Last Year Total Income
Stockbroker set the price of j.com 610000 shares to only one yen that caused the stock market to suffer a huge losses.

17- Kodak Missed New Technology
Although Kodak had original camera but failed to realize its competitors in the market that showed up with the latest technology and eventually Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

18- ABC Dismissed Bill Cosby Offer
ABC dismissed Bill Cosby’s offer of a sitcom based on a wealthy black family. But later that show gained huge popularity when taken by NBC.

19- Western Union Declined Telephone
This company refused to buy a patent of the telephone from Alexander graham bell and later identified its mistake.

20- Alitalia Italian Airline Marked lowest Business Class Flight Charges
This blunder cost in million as the price marked for business class was $39 instead of $3900 and almost 2000 tickets got sold.

Conclusion
We suffer a lot due to our unintentional mistakes and business mistakes are not repairable at all. We hardly learn anything from others’ blunders. Maybe we think that what happened to others may not happen to us because we share a different fate. This thought is wrong, especially in business. All of you share the same market where if you don’t show up with something creative you will lose the game!