The Dumbest Moments in Business History: Useless Products, Ruinous Deals, Clueless Bosses, and Other Signs of Unintelligent Life in the Workplace [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Adam Horowitz (Author) "A bad idea has to start somewhere..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Federal Express, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
This is the most hilarious work of nonfiction I've ever read. Inside American big business, a clueless, boneheaded, myopic, dimwitted, shifty, fatuous, self-serving, tangle-footed boob has been crying to be let out - and with The Dumbest Moments in Business History, Horowitz has done it. Bruce McCall, humorist for The New Yorker; I laughed from the first page to the last. Why other people's dumbness should be funny is a question for the ages, one that we may never be able to answer. All I know is that it truly is, and this hilarious, eminently readable book is a reminder to executives everywhere that there is a banana peel lurking around every corner. Stanley Bin, author of The Big Bing and Throwing the Elephant --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
Business 2.0 magazine publishes an annual cover story called "The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business." Featuring 101 hilarious items about the year’s most unbelievably stupid business blunders, it’s hugely popular with its more than half a million print subscribers—and with the two million people who read it on the Web this year. In The Dumbest Moments in Business History, the editors of Business 2.0 have compiled the best of their first four annual issues plus great (or not so great, if you happen to be responsible) moments from the past.

From New Coke to the Edsel, from Rosie magazine to Burger King’s "Herb the Nerd," the book’s highlights include:
• a Romanian car plant whose workers banded together to eliminate the company’s debt by donating sperm and giving the proceeds to their employer
• the Heidelberg Electric Belt, a sort of low-voltage jockstrap sold in 1900 to cure impotence, kidney disorders, insomnia, and many other complaints
• the time Beech-Nut sold "100% pure apple juice" that contained nary a drop of apple juice
• the Midas ad campaign featuring an elderly customer ripping open her blouse and showing her "mufflers" to the guys in the shop
• a London videogame maker that sought volunteers who would allow the company to place ads on the headstones of deceased relatives

Grouped by theme—bosses gone bad, criminally creative accounting, etc.—The Dumbest Moments in Business History is a fun and funny look at the big-time ways that big-time companies have screwed up through the decades.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; illustrated edition edition (January 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159184035X
• ISBN-13: 978-1591840350
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,310,814 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who Has 20/20 Hindsight?, February 10, 2004

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Whether or not these are, in fact, the dumbest may be subject to debate but they will certainly serve the purposes of Horowitz and the editors of Business 2.0 magazine, assisted by Mark Athitakis and Mark Lasswell. (For my own purposes, I will simply refer to them collectively as the book's co-authors.) Throughout nine chapters, they examine "useless products, ruinous deals, clueless bosses, and other signs of unintelligent life in the workplace." The material offers substantial entertainment value ("What on earth were they thinking?") but also provides several legitimate business lessons which, hopefully, will enable an enlightened reader to avoid making the same mistakes. How were these "moments" selected? There were three primary criteria: First of all, nobody gets killed...Second, the stories must have a discernible moment of utter fatuity rather than a slowly festering brainlessness...Third, when some form of business buffoonery is particularly chronic, only the choicest example makes the cut." These are obviously not dumb criteria.

The titles of the nine chapters correctly indicate how the co-authors organized evidence of "unintelligent life in the workplace." It seems eminently appropriate that in Chapter One: Research and Development, they include this familiar observation: "Everything that can be invented has been invented." Charles H. Duell, Federal Office of Patents commissioner, 1899. Subsequent chapters examine Human Resources, Manufacturing and Production, Senior Management, Public Relations, Sales and Marketing, Accounting, Legal, and Information Technology. The usual suspects include New Coke, the Edsel, the Waterworld film, 17th century tulip bulbs, and Charles K. Ponzi. However, there are dozens of other "moments" of which I was previously unaware.

I also appreciate the wealth of quotations, especially when provided by those (such as Mr. Duell) who should have known better. For example, then president and CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation Kenneth Olson at the annual convention of the World Future Society in 1977: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." Years earlier, Thomas Watson, Sr. (then CEO of IBM) estimated that the worldwide market for personal computers was fewer than ten. Presumably those who headed Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) agreed with Watson and Olson. How else to explain their generous provision of information to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak which enabled them to complete the design of what became the Apple I computer?

As I read this entertaining as well as informative book, I recalled the suggestion (but not the source) that Russian historians can predict the past with absolute accuracy and Theodore Roosevelt's comments about "the man in the arena." Also Thomas Edison's response to an assistant's frustration after 90+ "failures" of a research project. Edison did not view them as failures. Rather, he explained, those efforts had merely indicated how NOT to solve the given problem.

For me, at least, the most valuable lessons to be learned are from failures, not successes. Now more than ever before, success in the business world heavily depends upon innovative thinking. Presumably the co-authors agree with me that "useless products, ruinous deals, clueless bosses, and other signs of unintelligent life in the workplace" are probably the inevitable price to be paid for achieving that success.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Okay...Only Marginally Instructive & Misses the Funny Bone, March 31, 2004

By	A. J Smith (Southwestern Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Doesn't live up to it's billing. Basically a hodge-podge of anecdotes and quotes, many of them familiar, or even tired, by now. A lot of the anecdotes pertain to criminal scams instead of business blunders. Many of the pieces relate incidents that happened a long time ago...early 20th Century or earlier. If you're expecting to find a good source of useful business lessons learned, you'll likely be disappointed. Also, the authors better not quit their day jobs...they don't show much promise as comedy writers. Most of their attempts at humor are forced and/or fall short...I didn't laugh out loud once as I read the book (and I think I have a pretty good sense of humor). At about 150 pages, with lots of white space, this book does not deliver the value you'd expect based on its current price. If you feel you must read it, at least wait until the paperback comes out or buy it used.

4.0 out of 5 stars The book would be even funnier if the Corporate world stopped making the same damn mistakes over and over. , September 24, 2008

By	Chad Riley "Enforcer84" (Corvallis, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Dumbest Moments in Business History: Useless Products, Ruinous Deals, Clueless Bosses, and Other Signs ofUnintelligent Life in the Workplace (Paperback)

The book is more or less funny, but should be given to people about to become CEO's. Turns out they still do the stupid greedy and self serving grasps, grafts, and grabs laid out here.

"We have seen the tulip futures and they are us."