Every company in this series was once dominant. Enron was the seventh-largest company in America. Kodak controlled ninety percent of film sales. Blockbuster had nine thousand stores. They all fell, and they all fell for reasons that were visible in advance to anyone paying attention.
Corporate Autopsy examines the rise and fall of business empires through the lens of pattern recognition. After thirty-five years in finance, Arthur Lee has identified recurring failure modes that appear across industries, decades, and geographies. Each episode dissects a different collapse, tracing the decisions, blind spots, and structural forces that transformed market leaders into cautionary tales.
The Patterns
Across every company examined in this series, several patterns emerge repeatedly:
The Cannibalisation Trap — Companies that invent their own disruption but refuse to deploy it because it threatens existing revenue. Kodak invented digital photography in 1975 and buried it.
The Revenue Addiction — Companies that become dependent on a single revenue stream and cannot imagine life without it. Blockbuster’s eight hundred million dollars in late fees made it impossible to compete with Netflix’s subscription model.
The Boardroom Coup — When the executive who understands the threat is fired by a board that only understands this quarter’s earnings. John Antioco tried to save Blockbuster. Carl Icahn fired him.
The Leverage Trap — When financial engineering extracts value faster than operations can create it. Toys R Us died not because of bad management but because private equity loaded it with five billion dollars in debt.
Why These Stories Matter
These are not ancient history. The same patterns playing out at Enron, Kodak, and Blockbuster are visible today in companies making identical mistakes. Understanding how empires fall is the first step toward recognizing when it is happening again.
New episodes premiere every Sunday.
