BUSINESS NIGHTMARES WITH EVAN DAVIS

Business Nightmares with Evan Davis is the must-see TV show, made in partnership with The Open University. This show tells the stories of the world’s most momentous business disasters and how they happened. The show documents the damage caused and the lessons that should be learned.  This fantastic three-part series examines business nightmares in detail and highlights the three fundamental areas in which disasters occur: The episodes are called: Doomed Designs, Marketing Mess-ups and Disastrous Decisions. The show features many case studies from businesses that got it wrong.

Unfortunately, the final episode is tomorrow (Thursday 19th May at 8pm on BBC2). The good news is that you can catch the first two episodes for the next eight days on BBC iPlayer by clicking here.

Business owners (including myself) do seem to fear failure, however, failure can be the best thing if we learn how to understand it, learn from it and recover from it. Part of my CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing involves my researching case studies and white papers. It is interesting that the April 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review was called “The Failure Issue” and it comprises many case studies of how businesses turned around their companies from failure level. I am still a firm believer that learning from others mistakes is better than making your own!

Since studying for my Diploma, I have learned that the subjects I have covered in my book Do a Madonna have been quoted by the world famous marketeers such as Handy, Belbin, Norton and Kaplan. Do a Madonna has been written in an easily-digestible format for new business owners and it includes some of the case studies mentioned in this TV show as well as others. You can purchase a copy of Do a Madonna by clicking here.