Sell Big or Die Fast

In History 341 today we will be talking about Gothic Cathedrals, which sometimes took a hundred years (hundreds of years) to build. To think about how quickly things move in our times, an article in the New York Times recently discussed how companies were quickly pulling the plug on products if it became apparent that something wasn't doing well. HP's tablet computer only lasted on the market for 48 days. Today's business environment is so competitive, companies believe that if their product is not a hit right away, it never will be. Given that this is the environment, one can certainly understand why companies might not want to hire a lot of new workers. For a point of comparison, in the classic case of a business failure, the Ford Edsel, Ford stuck with it for two years before killing it.