Several years ago the top management of a multi-billion dollar corporation decided that Product X was a failure and should be dropped. The losses involved exceeded $100 million. At least five people knew that Product X was in serious trouble six years before the company decided to stop producing it. Three were plant managers who lived daily with the production problems. The two others were marketing officials, who perceived that the manufacturing problems could not be solved without expenditures that would raise the price of the product to the point where it would no longer be competitive in the market.
A version of this article appeared in the September 1977 issue of Harvard Business Review.
