The View | Corporate geniuses often make the daftest mistakes – but remember greed can have a stronger sway than rationality
Samsung’s best and brightest are to blame for its current explosive situation, as were their counterparts at Enron when it blew up, and at Volkswagen as it tried to evade environmental standards
“I have a special message for anyone watching tonight’s show on their Samsung Galaxy Note 7,” a US talk show said in his opening monologue recently. “Run for your lives.”
It is not nice to laugh at other’s misfortunes – and this will be an extremely costly one for Samsung Electronics. But spontaneously combusting phones do have a natural, slapstick comedy element to them, and also make for really funny internet memes.
Plus let’s face it; there is something in human nature that thrills at seeing the successful screw up and the powerful fall.
This is all the more true in light of today’s winner-take-all economic landscape. Samsung has the world’s biggest market share in smartphones, or around a quarter of this enormous global market. In some parts of the rich world, the market is mostly divvied up between just it and Apple.
Trends in technology and globalisation have led to a concentration of corporate power. The same trend is mirrored in everyday life. The outsized individual winners – the top 1 per cent of earners – have enjoyed sweeping gains in their shares of income.
