Welcome to Business Failure 101
In the 1960s, IBM CEO Tom Watson called an executive into his office after his venture lost $10 million. Watson asked the man if he knew why head been called in. The man said he assumed he was being fired. Watson told him, aFired? Hell, I spent $10 million educating you. I just want to be sure you learned the right lessons.a
In “Billion-Dollar Lessons,” Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui draw on research into more than 750 business failures to reveal the misguided tactics that mire companies again and again. There are thousands of books about successful companies but virtually none about the lessons to be learned from those that crash and burn.
Lesson One: The Cold Hard Facts
Between 1981 and 2006, 423 major publicly held U.S. companies with combined assets totaling $1.5 trillion filed for bankruptcy. Hundreds more took huge write-offs, discontinued major operations, or were acquired under duress. Again and again, companies follow the same wrong-headed strategies that brought down businesses in the past. The sub-prime mortgage crisis that cost companies tens of billions of dollars in 2007 and 2008 echoes the ill-conceived strategies that pushed Green Tree Financial and Conseco into bankruptcy years earlier. Tom Watsonas executiveas $10 million lesson seems cheap by comparison.
Lesson Two: Failure Patterns
Carroll and Mui found that the number one cause of failure was misguided strategyanot sloppy execution, poor leadership, or bad luck. These strategic errors fall into seven categories, including:
*Pursuing nonexistent synergies: Quaker Oatsa purchase of Snapple was supposed to capitalize on distribution synergies but insteadled to a $1.7 billion write-off.
*Moving into an aadjacenta market that isnat really adjacent: Avon decided its aculture of caringa qualified it to operate retirement homes. Subsequent write-offs totaled $545 million.
*Buying more problems than efficiencies through misguided consolidation: Despite pioneering the discount department store years before Sam Walton came along, Ames Department Stores flubbed consolidation efforts, landing in bankruptcy twice before eventually liquidating.
Lesson Three: Avoid Making the Same Mistakes
But thereas light at the end of the tunnel: “Billion-Dollar Lessons” provides proven methods that managers, boards, and even investors can adopt to avoid making the same mistakes. While thereas no way to guarantee success, this book draws on vivid, off-the-beaten-track examples to help you avoid failure by showing you how to thoroughly assess potentially disastrous strategies before they bring your company down.
Required Reading
Think of “Billion-Dollar Lessons” as the flip side of “Good to Great,” but just as eye- opening and essential as that business classic. Thereas enormous value in learning from companies that lost millions (if not billions) in pursuit of strategies that led to spectacular flameouts. Everyone makes mistakes, but why make the same mistakes over and over?

Product Specification :

ISBN :1591842891
Format aperback: Updated: 320 pages
Publisher ortfolio
Date Published :08/25/2009
List price :16

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I Made It – Lil Wayne Kevin Rudolf Birdman & Jay Sean – (Cash Money Heroes) LYRICS
I Made It – Lil Wayne Kevin Rudolf Birdman & Jay Sean – (Cash Money Heroes) LYRICS
I Made It – Lil Wayne Kevin Rudolf Birdman & Jay Sean – (Cash Money Heroes) LYRICS

I Made It – Lil Wayne Kevin Rudolf Birdman & Jay Sean – (Cash Money Heroes) LYRICS
I Made It – Lil Wayne Kevin Rudolf Birdman & Jay Sean – (Cash Money Heroes) LYRICS

I Made It – Lil Wayne Kevin Rudolf Birdman & Jay Sean – (Cash Money Heroes) LYRICS
I Made It – Lil Wayne Kevin Rudolf Birdman & Jay Sean – (Cash Money Heroes) LYRICS

I Made It – Lil Wayne Kevin Rudolf Birdman & Jay Sean – (Cash Money Heroes) LYRICS

Duration : 0:4:21

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Filmed on 26th December, 2007.

This is the last pursuit before I gain in total, 1 Billion Bounty.
Note: The driving here is pretty average, so base your judgements on the bounty points, not the skill involved.

Duration : 0:9:7

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Duration : 0:2:37

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SHUTTLE UPDATE – KSC/MSFC
Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for a February 7 launch the International Space Station. The STS-122 Crew lead by Commander Steve Frick are slated to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A at 2:45 p.m. Eastern. Testing at the Marshall Space Flight Center indicates that the fuel sensor problems, which caused STS-122 to be delayed, have been fixed. A redesigned connector on the engine cutoff sensors has passed tough cryogenic and vibration tests, verifying its readiness for flight.

ISS SPACEWALK – JSC
astronaut Andy Thomas met with members of Virginia’s General Assembly to highlight the contributions that Langley and the Wallops Flight Facility have made to the state’s aerospace industry. Thomas also spoke with students about his career in space exploration. Together, Langley and Wallops provide 10-thousand high-paying jobs and generate more than a billion dollars for Virginia’s economy. Further south, representatives from the Stennis Space Center visited the state capital in Jackson to meet with legislators as part of NASA Space Day in Mississippi. Stennis and its nearly 5-thousand employees had an estimated impact of $839 million on Mississippi’s economy in 2007, a 27 percent increase from the previous year.

Veteran astronaut Mike Foale thanked Mississippi legislators for their continued support of NASA.

ARES LIVE! – MSFC
Steve Cook, the Ares Project Manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center, took part in a live, televised discussion with Huntsville area middle school students. WHNT-TV, Huntsville’s CBS affiliate, and E-TV, the city’s educational channel, broadcast the one-hour event. Select students interacted with Cook through a Digital Learning Network; others emailed Cook questions about Ares, NASA’s launch vehicles that will take humans back to the moon and later to Mars and other destinations.

EXPLORER 1 – JPL
A half-century ago, Explorer 1 became America’s first Earth-orbiting satellite. In Huntsville, the birthplace of the U.S. space program, remembering Explorer was part of a gala celebration for the grand opening of the Davidson Center for Space Exploration. The gala also kicked off a yearlong commemoration of NASA’s 50th anniversary by Discovery Communications with special events, projects and programming in partnership with the agency. Dr. Wernher von Braun and his team designed, tested and built Explorer’s rocket at the Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the Explorer 1 spacecraft, celebrated with numerous events. JPL also produced a documentary about Explorer to air on Los Angeles public TV, and nationally on Discovery HD Theatre and NASA Television. The launch of Explorer 1 50 years ago propelled America into the space age.

And that’s This Week At NASA!

Duration : 0:6:48

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Duration : 0:4:12

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While the Bank of Israel expects the country’s fortunes to dip next year, along with the world economy, growth is still expected to exceed four percent. Not bad, given that the U.S., one of its biggest trading partners, is staring down the barrel of potential recession.

“The Israeli economy has managed to develop a kind of isolation from the political instability,” says Yossi Mekelberg, Associate Fellow of the Middle East Program at Chatham House.

“It’s almost isolated, mainly because it’s based on hi-tech, pharmaceutical industries, and chemicals, and I think these are the things that are less conditioned by the political situation.”

Israel says it spends a greater percentage of its GDP on hi-tech research and development than any other country.

According to the Israel Venture Capital Research Center, 3,361 hi-tech companies are operating in Israel. And they’re attracting foreign interest and dollars. In the first three quarters of 2007, they raised more than $1.2 billion dollars in funding, 10 percent more than the same period the previous year.

Yossi Vardi is an industry veteran. He backed his first technology business almost forty years ago and has so far lent his expertise to 65 fledgling companies.

“Our strength on the food chain is usually in the very early stages where you have to come with ideas, innovation and take great risks,” Yossi Vardi says.

“The hi-tech industry is not a monolithic thing. In China, they do manufacturing. In India, they do coding. We are very good in the early stages, like Silicon Valley. And this is what the world is looking for in Israel.”

The country’s fortunes contrast sharply with the economic turmoil engulfing the Palestinian territories.

According to the World Bank, the Israeli per capita GDP is more than 20 times that of the Palestinians.

Two-thirds of Palestinian people are thought to be living in poverty, although some say the figure could be even higher.

Since the election of Hamas in 2006, private investment in the region has all but dried up.
The government is relying on loans, remittances and donor aid, but it’s not enough to cover expenditure. The World Bank estimated the Palestinian National Authority was running up a deficit of $100 million a month in the first half of 2007.

This week, after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, U.S. President George W. Bush called for them to make “painful concessions” to reach a peace deal.

Bush has predicted a peace treaty will be signed by the time he leaves office in 2009.

Yossi Mekelberg from the foreign policy think-tank Chatham House says a deal would create economic benefits for both sides of the divide.

“I think the direct benefits of a peace agreement would be immense, both for the Israelis and the Palestinians,” he says.

“When there is a peace agreement there will be more investment. The European Union, the United States, and others will investors will pour more money, as happened post-1993. And also, let’s bear in mind there will be an extra growing economy that has more than four million people, the Palestinian economy, so, a peace dividend can be only positive.

Duration : 0:6:6

Technorati Tags: buffet, cnn, economy, hi, hi-tech, israel, jewish, software, tech, technology

Why must you always sacrifice style when protecting money? So often is the case that cash boxes are unobtrusively plain and so restrained. Finally, an attractive Cash box that can be kept from under the bed! Features include a plastic insert tray to organize bills and coins, with plenty of room underneath for tickets or receipts. • Smooth, chrome handle for comfortable carrying. • A tumbler lock for convenient key-less security. • Rubber feet prevent skidding and scuffing. • Reinforced chrome corners, brushed aluminum trim, and rivets provide strength. • Scratch-resistant surface. Size: 10″ wide x 4.75″ high x 8.25″ long

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“Star Wars Returns,” a video documentary exposing how the Bush administration is moving to make space a new arena of war, in violation of the intent of international law, has just been released by EnviroVideo.

The documentary is being distributed in the U.S. and around the world.” Star Wars Returns” is narrated and was written by investigative reporter and journalism Professor Karl Grossman, directed and edited by Emmy Award-winner Steve Jambeck and produced by Joan Flynn.

It presents U.S. military documents setting forth U.S. plans to “control space” and from space “dominate” the earth below. It reveals the multi-billion dollar U.S. development program now underway to produce space-based laser weapons, and that far more than “missile defense” is involved. It also details the international opposition to the U.S. Star Wars program.

“Star Wars Returns” explores the recently issued report of the Space Commission chaired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld which calls for U.S. “power projection in, from and through space” and declares: “In the coming period the U.S. will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on earth and in space.”

U.S. Senator Bob Smith, who wrote the legislation establishing the Rumsfeld Space Commission, asserts in “Star Wars Returns” about U.S. “control” of space: “It is our manifest destiny. You know we went from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States of America settling the continent and they call that manifest destiny and the next continent if you will, the next frontier, is space and it goes on forever.”

Others appearing in “Star Wars Returns” are Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space; Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll (USN, ret.), vice president of the Center for Defense Information; Congressman Dennis Kucinich; physicist Dr. Vandana Shiva of India; Bill Sulzman, director of Citizens for Peace in Space; Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York; editor Loring Wirbel; and Regina Hagen, a Global Network director.

Also interviewed is Craig Eisendrath who, as a U.S. State Department officer, was central in drafting the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the intent of which the U.S. is now preparing to violate, charges Eisendrath in “Star Wars Returns.” It is the basic international law on space, ratified by most countries of the world, and sets space aside for “peaceful purposes.”

Duration : 0:9:34

Technorati Tags: atomic, bomb, Iran, Iraq, lasers, nasa, nuclear, nuke, PNAC, sattelite, shuttle, space, star, war, wars

Duration : 0:0:54

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