Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last Twenty-five Years

Paul B. Carroll wrote for The Wall Street Journal for seventeen years. The author of Big Blues, he founded Context, the first “new economy” magazine, in 1997. He lives outside Sacramento, California. Chunka Mui is the coauthor of the major business bestseller Unleashing the Killer App and a fellow at Diamond Management and Technology Consultants. He lectures and consults widely on strategy and innovation and lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Jim Bond's low-key performance works well with this fascinating business lesson. His pleasant voice and deliberate pace energize the lengthy, weighty text. The material itself is based on a methodical study of large corporate failures from which the authors have abstracted seven types of strategic errors. These are judgment problems that appear at the CEO and board-of-director levels of large public companies, but the human dimension in the authors' writing will make their abstractions useful to leaders in all types of businesses. In spite of its academic tone, the text holds one's attention because of its compelling examples, methodical approach, and Bond's top-shelf interpretation. T.W. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine