Business History
This Japanese company started in 1889 making handmade playing cards before becoming a video game giant.
Nintendo
This term describes a company's strategy of entering a market with no existing competition, rather than fighting for share in an already crowded space.
Blue Ocean Strategy
This blood-testing startup, once valued at $9 billion, collapsed after its technology was revealed to be fraudulent; its founder was later convicted of fraud.
Theranos
In 2016, this social media platform for professionals was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion, its largest acquisition at the time.
This e-commerce giant's 1997 IPO priced shares at just $18, and a single share bought then would be worth well over $2,000 today after multiple stock splits.
Amazon
This company was originally founded in 1865 as a trading post in Minnesota before becoming one of the world's largest agribusiness and food conglomerates, still privately held today.
Cargill
This term, popularized by Clayton Christensen, describes how smaller companies with fewer resources can successfully challenge larger, well-established competitors by initially targeting overlooked or underserved segments of the market.
Disruptive Innovation
This Indian hyperlocal grocery delivery startup, once valued highly and backed by Sequoia, shut down operations in 2022 after failing to scale profitably against Blinkit and Zepto.
Dunzo
In 2024, this Indian FMCG giant acquired a majority stake in health food and cereal bar brand Yoga Bar, marking its push into the healthy snacking segment.
Hindustan Unilever (HUL)
This Chinese e-commerce giant's 2014 IPO on the NYSE raised $25 billion, making it the largest IPO in history at the time.
Alibaba
This company began in 1837 as a candle and soap manufacturer in Cincinnati, founded by two brothers-in-law, before becoming a consumer goods giant.
Procter & Gamble
This management concept, developed at Toyota, focuses on eliminating waste (muda) while maximizing customer value.
Lean Manufacturing
This social media app, popular in the mid-2000s for customizable profiles and music players, lost its dominant position to Facebook and was eventually sold for a fraction of its $580 million purchase price.
In 2005, eBay acquired this internet communications company for $2.6 billion, a deal widely considered a failure as the two businesses had little strategic overlap, and eBay later sold it at a loss.
Skype
This American company was founded in 1892 through the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric, making it one of the original 12 companies listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average when it launched in 1896 — and the only one still on the index today
General Electric (GE)
This Japanese term, meaning "continuous improvement," refers to a business philosophy where employees at all levels work together to make incremental improvements to processes.
Kaizen
This co-working company, once valued at $47 billion, saw its valuation collapse before a planned 2019 IPO after scrutiny of its business model and founder's leadership.
WeWork
In 1999, this merger between a British and American mobile telecom company to acquire Mannesmann was valued at over $180 billion, making it the largest corporate merger in history at the time — a title it still holds by some measures.
Vodafone
This German company began in 1847 as a telegraph manufacturer founded by Werner von Siemens, and helped build the first long-distance telegraph line between London and Calcutta.
Siemens
This game theory concept describes a stable state in a strategic interaction where no player can improve their outcome by unilaterally changing their strategy, given the strategies chosen by all other players — formalized by mathematician John Nash and widely applied to pricing wars and competitive strategy in business.
Nash Equilibrium
This company created the dominant early web browser of the 1990s, controlling over 80% of the market at its peak, before losing the "browser wars" to Microsoft's Internet Explorer — its browser engine was later open-sourced and became the foundation for Firefox.
Netscape
In 2021, this merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group (maker of Peugeot and Citroën) created the world's fourth-largest automaker by volume, and resulted in a new parent company name that didn't exist before the deal.
Stellantis