"Read enough biographies (and business case studies), and you’ll eventually see that the most impressive people (and companies) were the ones who had to overcome many challenges by making big, unplanned changes." To be fair, no one writes biographies of the ones who failed, either. It's easy to weave a tale once you look back from a successful perch. Working hard is necessary, but by no means sufficient. The Stoics had it right.
I would love to read a great book or watch a documentary about companies that did absolutely everything right. But failed because of bad luck or poor timing or some missed opportunity. Would be extremely informative.
"Read enough biographies (and business case studies), and you’ll eventually see that the most impressive people (and companies) were the ones who had to overcome many challenges by making big, unplanned changes." To be fair, no one writes biographies of the ones who failed, either. It's easy to weave a tale once you look back from a successful perch. Working hard is necessary, but by no means sufficient. The Stoics had it right.
Survivorship bias will always be an issue.
I would love to read a great book or watch a documentary about companies that did absolutely everything right. But failed because of bad luck or poor timing or some missed opportunity. Would be extremely informative.
There are a number of these out there published after the dotcom bust. One on BooHoo, ataster a clothing retailer, comes to mind (later relaunched at least for a while) https://diatnurhidayat.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/boo-hoo-case-study.pdf