How great companies commit suicide

Allan Leighton

This is an edited version of the Marketing Society Annual Lecture 2002. In this wide ranging, and challenging article Allan Leighton analyses how and why companies fail.

How great companies commit suicide

Allan LeightonGoing Plural

Business used to be dead easy. Today, however, businesses operate at one of two extremes. Either utopia is just around the corner, or it's the apocalypse and everything's going to implode around us. The middle bit has disappeared. We are at the edges and we have a choice about which one of those two we end up in.

Every big failure was once a huge success

At Marks & Spencer, the billions of pounds of profit turned into profits warnings in a relatively short period of time. Asda, when...

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