When Giants Stumble: Classic Business Blunders and How to Avoid Them

How to explain "classic business blunders" by some of the world's most successful companies? How to avoid such blunders? Robert Sobel answers both questions in When Giants Stumble. Sobel is a highly esteemed business historian. In a separate chapter within When Giants Stumble, he examines each of these "giants" and the primary cause of their respective blunders: Osborne Computer (ineptitude) E.J. Korvette (hubris) Kaiser-Frazer (ignorance) RCA (nepotism) W.R. Grace (nonstrategic expansion) Packard (downward brand extension) Schlitz and Pabst (cutting corners) James Ling (fighting the government) Drexel Burnham Lambert (isolation) The Penn Central (mismatch) Montgomery Ward (stopped clock) American Tobacco (standing pat) The New York Stock Exchange (narrow view) Schwinn (multiple blunders)Robert Sobel's recent death denies all of us any additional contributions by him to a cohesive, comprehensive, and circumspect understanding of the business world. Those who read and learn from When Giants Stumble are forever in his debt.

A great read for anyone who needs to learn important lessons about business in America. Those in business who do not know the history of business failure are destined to repeat it. I am an executive in a large company and it was interesting to note the patterns of business failure that might be present in my own company. I passed my copy of the book around. Robert Sobel made some interesting picks of business failures. Hindsight is 20-20, but Sobel takes you through the history in a nonjudgmental evenhanded fashion. Also, I appreciated the fact that Sobel does not cram his point of view down that the reader's throat, instead letting the reader come to his or her own conclusions. Too often, writers have hidden agendas that are obvious. From a reading of this book, I still do not know Sobel's ideological/political views, and I respect him more for this fact.

This book is a great read, detailing classic business blunders. This historical perspective on companies such as Osborne Computers, E.J. Korvette, and Pabst were excellent!