Fortune, which shares a parent, Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), with BloggingStocks, struck out this week. What I mean is that it published three articles -- each of which I think completely missed the boat. I really like when Fortune gets an in-depth interview with interesting business leaders. But sometimes, it goes too far praising its subjects.
That may have been what happened in the three stories where I think Fortune whiffed:
- Providence Equity Partners. Fortune had a cover story praising Providence Equity Partners for closing the biggest private equity deal ever. Unfortunately, as I posted, that $52 billion deal fell apart this week. To be fair, Fortune updated its online version of the article with this information. Strike One.
- Bernanke saves the day. Fortune posted an article praising Bernanke for stopping the slide in the stock market with his fast interest rate cuts and emergency lending. This week that illusion was burst as the Dow lost 507 points. Strike Two.
- Customer-driven innovation. Fortune published a column about C. K. Prahalad's supposedly-ground breaking book about customer-driven innovation. I found this a bit annoying because the idea is not new at all. Eric Von Hippel, an MIT professor, wrote about this topic in 1994 in his book The Sources of Innovation. And I am not sure he was the first. So I don't think the Prahalad concept is really all that new. Strike Three.
I like Fortune editor Andy Serwer's writing style and miss his Captain's Blog and Street Life columns. But I don't think this was Fortune's greatest week.
Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-23-2008 @ 7:05PM
Kent said...
I'd like to know if Peter Cohan agrees with me as I do about his comments on Fortune that Business Week is as about as good as they come when it comes to sizing up our economy and businesses.