Open records
5 of 23 records, free, exactly as they appear in the set. 9 more verified records are in the purchased files.
| Company | Fork date | The fork | Options | Choice | Stated rationale | What happened | Judgment analyst | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Read the story → verified | 2001-05-19 | Whether to sell through resellers or open Apple's own retail stores |
| Open Apple's own stores | Resellers misrepresented the products and Apple wanted to control the customer experience and margin | 5 years · 2017 sales per square foot: roughly $5,546 per square foot - the highest of any retailer in the United States | reversibility low verdict held | Apple Newsroom (press release) (2001-05); BusinessWeek (archived at Bloomberg) (2001-05); eMarketer rankings (reported by AppleInsider/9to5Mac/CNBC) (2017-07) |
| Atlassian Read the story → verified | 2014 | Whether to hire commissioned salespeople or keep letting the product sell itself |
| Make the sales hire | The Data Center product raised the average selling price from roughly $4,000 to roughly $48,000, giving enough margin to fund a commissioned rep | 5 years · 2026-03 Workforce reorganization toward sales: announced layoffs of roughly 10% of its workforce explicitly to pivot toward AI and enterprise sales | reversibility medium verdict held | WorkOS / Crossing the Enterprise Chasm Podcast (2023); Atlassian Corporation / LinkedIn (2023); Intercom Blog / Scale Podcast (2020-09); Wikipedia (2026) |
| Best Buy Read the story → verified | 1989 | Whether to keep commissioned selling or eliminate it and put all inventory on a self-serve discount floor |
| Adopt Concept II self-serve | Stripping out selling cost let Best Buy compete on price and selection, driving volume that gave it bargaining power over suppliers | 5 years · 2011 Supplier concentration, top five suppliers: five largest suppliers represented 39% of total merchandise purchased | reversibility low verdict held | Wikipedia (citing Best Buy 10-K and contemporaneous sources) (2024); Best Buy Co., Inc. / SEC EDGAR (2025); Best Buy Co., Inc. / SEC EDGAR (2011) |
| Best Buy Read the story → verified | 2013-03-03 | Whether to make price-matching Amazon a permanent policy |
| Make price-matching permanent | Matching kept the shopper at the register because letting customers walk out to buy elsewhere was worse | Latest · 2013 Vendor-funded store-within-a-store space: Samsung opened Experience Shops in more than 1,400 Best Buy stores and Microsoft opened Windows stores at 500 U.S. sites | reversibility medium verdict held | Best Buy Co., Inc. / Retail Dive (2013-02); Indigo9 Digital Inc. (2021-08); SEC EDGAR / Best Buy Co., Inc. (2015-03); Market Realist (2015-01) |
| Dell Read the story → verified | 1994-07 | Whether to stay on retail shelves or retreat to direct-only selling |
| Exit retail, go direct-only | Retail reintroduced inventory forecasting and writedowns that hurt profitability and liquidity | 5 years · 2008 channel distribution: Dell began selling through Wal-Mart in June 2007 and was in roughly 10,000 retail locations by 2008 | reversibility high verdict partial | Dell Computer Corporation (1995); Strategy+Business (1998); SEC EDGAR / Dell Computer Corporation (1995-02); Kellogg Insight / Northwestern University (2007) |
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- 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.