Author: Maria Chzhen
"Business Adventures" by John Brooks. I suppose that if you ever heard of this book, it's because it is Bill Gates' and Warren Buffet's favourite business book. I know, amazing. Two of the richest folks in the US love the same business book that I am now reviewing.
The book was written in the 1960s by John Brooks and only republished again in 2014. The book is written in a different way than other economics and business-related books. John Brooks doesn't just talk about "tips and tricks to succeed: what businesses don't tell you." Or how employers started using some special technique to get their workers to do their job. No, it is just 12 stories written for the New Yorker by John Brooks, where you have to be the one to find out the meaning and what the moral of the story was. That is pretty exciting!
I have a few favourite stories that I will tell you about. If you read the book, you may not agree with me and find these stories boring. I don't argue over tastes and preferences. But here are some of the ones I liked:
1. Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox
As you probably noticed, there was a little play on words with the title. Since Xerox was the first company actually to invent xerox, and it is the machine that makes multiple copies of the same document, you can understand the pun. Brooks uses Xerox as a typical example of a large corporation that originally started as an innovation, but then turned into one of these grey companies that don't welcome much creativity in there.
2. Ford Edsel fiasco
This is one of the best stories in the book, in my opinion, because it took a unique situation from the 1950s. What happened is that Ford, the car company, decided that their cars weren't good and expensive enough. They wanted to produce something ground-breaking, amazing! And at first, when Edsel, their new car, was created, everything was indeed going smooth. The name of the car was picked out by professionals; the studies supported everything that Ford claimed. The advertisement campaign was just great. The car itself was ok in quality as well. It used all the techniques, was on people's minds and got a lot of publicity. While you would think that all of this worked out, Edsel would sell out like crazy, or at least the company wouldn't have losses, this would be wrong. As surprising as it sounds, Edsel did not sell out. And in fact, the losses were equal to the losses that would take place if Ford were to give out appr. One hundred fifty thousand of their previous cars. I know, what could go wrong?!
3. Texas Gulf Case of 1959
Oh, I loved Texas Gulf Case of 1959. It was interesting, and the message was clear to me at once. In the late-1950s, Texas Gulf decided to explore the Canadian Shield. They flew all over it and saw that the radars were glitching in appr. 3000 areas. Having smart people on board, they decided to explore the areas. They bought one piece of land and discovered plenty of minerals that were just incredibly rare and quite expensive too. No, it doesn't end there. The scientists that were on board realized by how much the stock prices would rise. After that, they told their families to buy stocks from Texas Gulf, and at the same time telling the public they never actually found it. There was a big scandal when everyone found out. And this is how the insider trading laws were born, kids!
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