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This was the perfect week to interview on Buiness Insanity Radio, Paul Carroll, co-author of the book, “Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years” Paul spent 17 years at the Wall Street Journal, where he was nominated twice for Pulitzer Prizes. He founded Context magazine, which was the first of the “new economy” magazines. He previously wrote “Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM,” which came out in 1993. He has appeared on The Today Show, the History Channel, NPR, among many other things. He says he lectures and consults on how companies can avoid winding up in his sequel!
We talked this week about:
1. How it took 258 public US Companies 25 years to write off $380B . This gives us a good perspective on the recent crisis with $700B write offs last week.
2. Paul agrees with George Santayana when he said- “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The subprime mortgage lenders made the same mistakes others have made in the past. He gives great examples of years ago, lenders giving money for 30 years to mobile home owners where the useful life of the home was 10 years.
3. How staying the course is not always the best thing to do. Strategy sometimes sets things in motion that cannot be stopped.
4. How important debate is inside of companies.
