Every Story
Eighteen companies that were counted out — and rebuilt themselves into industry leaders. Each case study covers the rise, the fall, the crisis, and the strategy behind the recovery.
Apple
Ninety days from bankruptcy to the most valuable company on Earth.
Microsoft
How a “lost decade” under Steve Ballmer gave way to a cloud-first culture that made Microsoft a $3 trillion company.
IBM
How an outsider CEO stopped the board from breaking up IBM — and turned a hardware giant into a services powerhouse.
Adobe
How Adobe risked its entire customer base to kill the boxed software it built its empire on.
Netflix
A rebrand that lost 800,000 subscribers in ten weeks — and the reversal that turned Netflix into the definition of streaming.
Nintendo
How the worst-selling console in Nintendo’s modern history gave way to one of the best-selling of all time.
Marvel Entertainment
From Chapter 11 bankruptcy to the highest-grossing film franchise in history, financed on a $525 million bet against its own characters.
LEGO
How a toy company that had diversified itself to the edge of bankruptcy rediscovered the brick — and became the most profitable toy company in the world.
Starbucks
How Starbucks’ founder came out of retirement, closed 7,100 stores for one afternoon, and rebuilt a chain that had scaled its way out of what made it special.
Xerox
An accounting scandal, $17 billion in debt, and a stock under $4 — rebuilt by the one executive everyone said couldn’t do it.
Domino’s Pizza
The only turnaround that started with the company publicly agreeing its own product was bad — and then became one of the best-performing stocks of the decade.
Ford Motor Company
The only Detroit automaker that avoided a government bailout — by mortgaging everything it owned, including the blue oval logo, first.
Chrysler
A $1.1 billion loss, a $1-a-year CEO salary, and a government loan guarantee Congress approved by a single vote.
General Motors
The largest industrial bankruptcy in U.S. history — and the 40-day restructuring that turned “Old GM” into a leaner company that could survive.
Best Buy
Amazon was turning Best Buy’s own stores into showrooms for its cheaper prices. The fix was to guarantee Best Buy would never lose on price at all.
Samsung Electronics
A chairman who burned $50 million of his own company’s defective products in a bonfire to force a culture of quality over quantity.
Burberry
A 150-year-old British heritage brand that had been reduced to a check pattern on bootleg baseball caps — rebuilt into a global luxury powerhouse through digital innovation.
Chipotle Mexican Grill
A wave of E. coli outbreaks erased two decades of “Food With Integrity” branding — and $10 billion in market value — in a single quarter.