30 Companies That Were Successful Until A Single Bad Decision Wrecked Them Completely

MTV stopped playing music.

Look at every single decision the Boeing executives have made over the past 5 years lol.

Sears discontinuing their catalog in the early 90s but not entering online sales until much later and long after Amazon took over what they gave up.

Blockbuster’s decision not to pursue streaming services.

Haven’t seen it yet but GE making Jack Welch CEO. GE was one of the gold star companies of the US, EVERYBODY wanted to work at GE because you’d be set for life. They took care of their employees, made a ton of money, made good products, what more could you ask for? Then Jack Welch came in and started firing people left and right, eliminating product lines, getting into finance, worrying about the stock growth.

Fast forward to today where GE is now three separate companies: Healthcare, Energy, and Aviation. Jack Welch pretty much single handedly broke down a company that was started by Edison and made some of the greatest technological advancements in the last century. That man is the worst.

BlackBerry for letting their arrogance think that Apple or Google couldn't challenge their majority in the smartphone market. Also, ignoring creating a smartphone without a physical keypad until it was way too late.

Two obvious cases come to mind:

1) Kodak (remember the film brand?) invented the digital camera in 1979 but did not pursue that line because they thought it would hurt film sales.

2) Blockbuster Video had an opportunity to merge with Netflix to manage online streaming content, but declined. Blockbuster was sure that video rental would never end.

My Pillow dude comes to mind, mixing extreme politics with business.

I still laugh about tumblr's decision to ban all adult content on their website...which was like 95% of their active user base.

"Our office is returning to in office 5 days a week to scare off talented introverts and attract psychopaths" -lots of companies with job posts today.

Delivering ‘shareholder value’. Boeing, Intel, Blizzard and Ubisoft to name a few. Companies need to deliver value for their customers instead, the shares and dividends will follow.

Gerald Ratner, CEO of The Ratner Group, operated a popular and successful jewelry business in the UK in the 1980s. He managed to sink his entire business enterprise in under ten seconds when he made a public TV appearance and joked that his company's products were "total c**p".

The value of his business dropped by about *half a billion pounds* in the immediate aftermath and almost went completely out of business.

TVs in a quiet restaurant.

I can understand TVs in a sports bar, but for the love of spaghetti, leave them OUT of the restaurants!

I used to carry a [TV B Gone](https://www.tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_main.php) until people started getting wise and disabled the remote input.

At one restaurant, on a date, there was music and conversation, and the TV in the corner droned along as everyone tried to ignore it. Then one guy got up and unplugged it, and the whole restaurant clapped!

Changing the recipe of Schlitz Beer to cheaper ingredients. In 1970 it was the #2 Beer in the country and by 2000 it was extinct.

Radio Shack trying to compete with Best Buy in bigger ticket consumer electronics rather than sticking to what they did best.

Nokia embarking with Windows for their smartphones


Microsoft ruining everything they touched in order to get cool: Skype, Skype for Business, Hotmail, IE6, OneDrive, aQuantive, Danger Inc., Band, Bing, Bob, Groove Music, Cortana Speakers, Zune and so many others.

1) Sears saying they wouldn’t take Visa or Mastercard, only Discover. Never shopped there again.

Susan G Komen hired Karen Handel after her failed bid for GA gov on an anti abortion platform. Karen convinced the founder that defunding Planned Parenthood mammograms would increase donations from the right.

They didn’t realize how many of their donors were not conservatives. Massive PR debacle and wave of donors asking for refunds.

So Komen said ‘oops, that was a bad move so we’re NOT defunding Planned Parenthood mammograms.

Conservatives then asked for donation refunds and non conservatives stayed away.

The nonprofit went from the most trusted name in charities to shuttering most of its local offices and reducing its revenue close to -60%.

Enron commiting fraud on a massive scale. Granted, it's also the only thing that made the company in the first place.

Yahoo had an opportunity to acquire Google for around $1M but decided not to. Since then, Yahoo, which was once a tech giant, saw a significant decline over the years and was acquired by Verizon in 2017 for about $4B. Fast forward to today, Google is now a powerhouse worth around $2T.