101 Dumbest Moments in Business

The year's biggest boors, buffoons, and blunderers

By Adam Horowitz, David Jacobson, Tom McNichol, and Owen Thomas
OK, but Gates would be the first to tell you that copying the competition is a brilliant strategy...
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22. BusinessWeek
OK, but Gates would be the first to tell you that copying the competition is a brilliant strategy...
In June, BusinessWeek publishes a cover with the headline "Bill Gates Gets Schooled" showing the Microsoft chairman in front of a blackboard.

The magazine itself gets schooled when observers point out that Seattle Weekly used the same line and a similar image a year earlier.

1. Wal-Mart
2. Northwest Airlines
3. McDonald's
4. General Motors
5. Kazakhstan
6. Steve Wynn
7. NY Times
8. Spirit Air
9. Porter County
10. Comcast
11. Starbucks
12. Sony
13. Safety Commission
14. Vonage
15. Wal-Mart, part 2
16. 'Anger' bar
17. Alarm One
18. Church-run nursery school
19. PBS Kids Sprout network
20. Fiji Water
21. FCC
22. BusinessWeek
23. Microsoft
24. B2/Raytheon CEO
25. BBC
26. Greyhound
27. Radio Shack
28. National Semi
29. Hyundai-Kia
30. Lone Star
31. Goldman Sachs
32. Trading-Markets
33. Heart Attack Grill
34. Museum of Contemp. Art
35. Wal-Mart, Part 3
36. Catawba County
37. Thomsonfly
38. Imelda Marcos
39. Greece
40. Natural Selection Foods
41. Home Depot CEO Nardelli
42. MBA candidates
43. Paris Hilton
44. Mayor of New Lenox, Ill.
45. Cryonics pioneers
46. UnitedHealth Group
47. Comverse Technology
48. Cablevision Systems
49. EnBW - German utility
50. British food processor
51. Honda
52. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison
53. Disney
54. Wal-Mart, part 4
55. Richard Hatch
56. AOL
57. AOL, part 2
58. YouTube
59. Golden State Warriors
60. Egokast.com
61. Microsoft
62. DDS Media
63. TextTrust
64. Powys County Council in Wales
65. CIA
66. Jessica Simpson
67. Sony
68. Hewlett-Packard
69. Royal Mail
70. KRON 4
71. Bausch & Lomb
72. Amazon.com
73. Wal-Mart, Part 5
74. Pearson Educational Measurement
75. Time Warner's Wayne Pace
76. AirTran
77. Bank of America
78. McCain Foods
79. Mercedes-Benz
80. News Corp.
81. McDonald's
82. Online-video fans
83. Taco Bell
84. Shai
85. U.S. Mint
86. Wal-Mart, Part 6
87. AussieBum
88. Mars
89. Hoboken, N.J.
90. Bristol-Myers Squibb
91. Crackheadz Gone Wild: New York
92. Michael Eisner
93. Stefan Eriksson
94. Greenville Drive
95. NTT
96. UCLA
97. Home Depot
98. Imagination 69
99. Tesco
100. Spin Master
101. Hasbro
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Contact Us Closed Captioning Manage Cookies+ Site Map

Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.