In the world of business, fortune often favours the brave. However, the history of commerce is full of missed opportunities, lost fortunes, and, let’s face it, plain stupidity.
So what are some of the most costly business blunders ever made? Here’s a rundown of the top five from Interactive.
(source: www.chestersu.com)
Saying ‘no’ to Harry Potter
JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, currently sits on a fortune reported to be in the region of one billion US dollars. However, it may not have come to be if it wasn’t for the intervention of an eight-year-old girl named Alice.
Rowling’s original manuscript for the first Harry Potter novel was turned down by 12 publishing houses, a few of them even telling her: ‘don’t give up your day job’. It was only when eight-year-old Alice, the daughter of a Bloomsbury editor, got hold of the first two pages of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ and subsequently demanded to read the rest of the book, that people started to think maybe Rowling was onto something big.
We all know what happened next. The Harry Potter series quickly became a publishing sensation, selling over 450 million books worldwide and catapulting JK Rowling from struggling single mother to literary sensation and global icon almost overnight.
The business lesson: sometimes, children know best!