In business, people always make mistakes and although a lot of people make mistakes in business, in most cases it is better to learn from the mistakes of others. A lot of people have made mistakes and a lot of companies have made mistakes as well. Let’s use this post to share a little business mistakes that some CEOs and companies have made.
Alitalia’s Typographical error
Would you ever think of a flight from Toronto to Cyprus for less than $50? Well Alitalia made a typographical error for business class at $39 instead of $3900 and sold 2000 tickets before they realized they had made a typographical error. The truth is no one is above mistake but a typo of such amount is really bad for business. The company decided to honor their customers even though they would lose over $7.7 million dollars.
Mizuho Shares imputing error
Tokyo’s Mizuho brokerage company has also had their share of mistakes. In 2005 Mizuho brokerage was meant to sell a share for 610,000 Yen but instead sold 610,000 shares for 1 Yen and this mistake cost Mizuho almost $225 million.
Blockbuster and Netflix
You know, innovation can be very deceitful and in some cases look like it doesn’t have a future and this was the case of Netflix when it approached Blockbuster to handle their online renting but blockbuster laughed at them and turned it turned.
Xerox Sharing Idea with Apple
Apple known as a giant in the tech world didn’t just become a giant on their own, they became a giant with the help of Xerox graphic user interface. Xerox allowed Apple into their facility as well as get stocks for allowing Apple look through their prototype.
Excite and Google deal
Every business believes in themselves and it is no doubt that excite believes in their search engine product and turned down Google twice. Now Google is the biggest search engine and Excite, the rest is history as they say it.
Conclusion
Mistakes can be very painful but when it cost businesses millions, billions and or bankruptcy, then it should be watched. Learning from others mistake can be a very good to overcome similar mistakes yourself.