Open records
5 of 80 records, free, exactly as they appear in the set. 55 more verified records are in the purchased files.
| Company | Fork date | The fork | Options | Choice | Stated rationale | What happened | Judgment analyst | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alibaba Read the story → verified | 2023-03-28 | Whether to break Alibaba into six independently listable business groups to unlock value |
| Reorganize and float parts | Let public markets price the parts so the visible sum would exceed the conglomerate's discounted whole | 1 year · 2023-09 Freshippo IPO status: Hong Kong listing postponed on weak appetite for consumer stocks | reversibility high verdict reversed | U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Alibaba Group Holding Ltd) (2023-05); CNN Business (2023-03); U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Alibaba Group Holding Ltd) (2023-11); Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Investor Relations) (2024-03); Radio Free Asia (2024-03) |
| Amazon Read the story → verified | 2000-11 | Where to place third-party sellers: in a separate destination or on Amazon's own product page |
| Third-party on own page | Let third-party sellers compete against Amazon's own retail managers on the very page the buyer has already opened | Latest · 2001 monthly gross merchandise sales: more than tripled in its first four months | reversibility low verdict held | Amazon.com Press Center (2001-03); Amazon.com / Amazon Investor Relations (2015); Amazon.com / Amazon Investor Relations (2015); Marketplace Pulse (2026) |
| Apple Read the story → verified | 2007 | Whether to build the iPhone to deliberately cannibalize the iPod, Apple's ~40% revenue product |
| Cannibalize with iPhone | If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will | 5 years · 2022 iPod product line retirement: the last model finally retired in 2022 | reversibility low verdict held | U.S. SEC (EDGAR) - Apple FY2006 10-K (2006-12); Walter Isaacson, 'Steve Jobs' (biography) (2011); Apple Newsroom (2022-05) |
| Atari Read the story → verified | 1982 | Whether to make the 5200 backward-compatible with the 2600 or launch it as a separate incompatible line |
| Ship incompatible parallel console | Atari positioned the 5200 as a higher-end complement to the 2600, and inter-divisional rivalry drove the deliberate incompatibility | 3 years · 1985 US video-game revenue: revenue slid from roughly $3.2 billion in 1982 toward under $100 million by 1985 | reversibility low verdict held | Wikipedia (2024); The Silicon Underground (2025-06); Wikipedia (2024) |
| BlackBerry Read the story → verified | 2012-03 | Whether to take BBM cross-platform onto iPhone and Android, cannibalizing the handset, or keep it locked to BlackBerry devices |
| Keep BBM handset-locked | Leadership could not stomach loosening BBM from the handset because the handset was the empire | Latest · 2012-06 quarterly loss and revenue: $518 million loss on $2.8 billion in revenue, shipments down 41% | reversibility low verdict held | The Globe and Mail (2013-09); TechCrunch (2012-06); BlackBerry Limited / U.S. SEC EDGAR (2013-09) |
What is in the set
ExcelSortable records, outcomes and sources
JSONDrop it into your AI workspace
PowerPointOne record per slide, action titles, source lines
WordEditable, with the source appendix
PDFThe reading copy
- Fork date at the precision the record supports, never sharper.
- The fork, the options, the choice in the form the company faced them.
- Stated rationale as the company gave it or the record documents it, not our theory.
- Capital committed where the record states it; blank where it does not.
- Outcomes at one, three and five years or latest, each dated and cited.
- Reversibility and verdict as analyst judgments, marked as such.
- Every source, with dates and links, per record and in an appendix.