Recent overview of "Billion Dollar Lessons" plus a description of our process for Independent Devil's Advocate Reviews.

1. Billion-Dollar
Lessons
Learning From Others’
Failures—
So They Won’t Happen To You
Chunka Mui
chunka@billiondollarlessons.com
BillionDollarLessons.com

2. © 2008 Chunka Mui | http://www.chunkamui.com

3. © 2008 Chunka Mui | http://www.chunkamui.com

4. Outline
1. Three Insights
2. One Recommendation
3. Personal Implications
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

5. Insight 1
Strategy Matters
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

6. Flawed
Strategies
46% 54%
Inept Execution or
Exogenous Factors
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

7. Insight 2
Seven Failure Patterns,
with Predictable Warning Signs
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

8. Seven Failure Patterns
1. Illusions of Synergy
2. Faulty Financial Engineering
3. Deflated Rollups
4. Staying the (Misguided) Course
5. Misjudged Adjacencies
6. Fumbling Technology
7. Consolidation Blues
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

9. Insight 3
Why do bad strategies happen
to smart people and good
companies?
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

10. © The New Yorker Collection 1979 Henry Martin from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

11. Outline
1. Three Insights
2. One Recommendation
3. Personal Implications
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

12. One Recommendation
Agree to Disagree
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

13. Decisions of the kind the executive has to
make ... are made well only if based on
conflicting views, the dialogue between
different points of view, the choice between
different judgments.
– Peter Drucker
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

14. Three Models
Alfred P. Sloan Ancient Persians Catholic Church
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

15. Independent Devil’s Advocate Review
Strategy Development
3. Last Chance Review
of Full Strategy
2. Examine Key
Design Questions
1. Surface and Test
Strategic Assumptions
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

16. Devil’s Advocate Principles
• Transparent throughout the organization, even
to the Board of Directors
• Led by a trusted, independent outsider
• Offers fresh perspectives
• Focuses on facts, not emotion or intuition
• Delivers questions, not answers
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

17. Outline
1. Three Insights
2. One Recommendation
3. Personal Implications
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

18. What does this mean for you?
• Investors
• Board of Directors
• CEO
• Functional Executives
• Business Unit Leaders
• Line Management
• Front Lines
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com

19. Biography
Chunka Mui’s perspectives have been shaped by
more than 25 years of research, consulting,
management and entrepreneurship. He is the co-
author, with Paul Carroll, of Billion-Dollar Lessons:
What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable
Business Failures of the Last 25 Years. A
companion article, Seven Ways to Fail Big, appears
in the September 2008 issue of the Harvard
Business Review. Chunka is also the co-author of
the best-selling Unleashing the Killer App: Digital
Strategies for Market Dominance (Harvard
Business School Press, 1998). The Wall Street
Journal recently named the book one of the five
best books on business and the Internet.
Chunka is an independent business advisor. He
is also a fellow with Diamond Management &
Technology Consultants, a global consulting firm
headquartered in Chicago. He holds a B.S. in
electrical engineering and computer science
from MIT. More information can be found at
billiondollarlessons.com.
© 2008 Chunka Mui | BillionDollarLessons.com