If You Aim To Long-Term Success, Be Ready To Destroy
Strategy is not only about creation
Imagine you’re a highly successful businessperson. Your company name is on the Fortune 500 list.
One beautiful morning, you walk into your large, sun-filled office building. Your employees are smiling at you, and you’re smiling back. You feel like a success.
And then you enter your personal office to meet me. And I tell you that you should prepare yourself to bring all of that down.
How would it feel?
Dinosaurs from the past
Do the following names sound familiar to you: NEC, DEC, Compaq, Atari, Commodore, Amiga, PET, Altair?
All these businesses used to sell computers and were successful. But for various reasons, you can’t buy a laptop with their logos anymore.
They didn’t manage to stay afloat, though Apple, Dell, or HP did.
And their stories aren’t just business cases. Behind them lie personal tragedies, unfulfilled dreams, and broken destinies.
Ken Olsen, who co-founded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957, was forced to retire in 1992. He faced criti…