License To Fail: The Business Mistakes Of Bond Villains

By Kevin Patrick Leech

IF YOU SUCCEED IN DESTROYING THE WORLD, WHO WILL BE YOUR CUSTOMERS?

In the James Bond movies, the villains are often successful entrepreneurs who have built their own world-beating corporations with dominant market positions. Yet instead of continuing their firms' managed growth, they overreach with a plan that is always illegal and often involves global destruction.

"LICENSE TO FAIL: The Business Mistakes of Bond Villains" finally takes these entrepreneurs to task, proving that the downfall of each is not due to the intervention of government operative James Bond, but is actually the consequence of bad business decisions.

- Should Blofeld hire teenage fashion models with severe allergy problems to distribute a lethal virus? (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
- Is Hugo Drax's sorting of his employees according to hotness a viable human resources strategy? (Moonraker)
- Is staging an "Enter The Dragon"-themed martial arts tournament an effective way to combat state-sponsored espionage? (The Man With The Golden Gun)
- Should a ruthless media mogul introduce himself to a new market by hanging Big Brother-esque posters of his grimacing face all over the country's capital? (Tomorrow Never Dies)
- Should Le Chiffre try to make money playing poker if bluffing causes his eyeball to bleed? (Casino Royale)

Goldfinger; Blofeld; Dr. No; Drax; Max Zorin of A View To A Kill; Trevelyan of GoldenEye; Le Chiffre of Casino Royale. These really are, to borrow a current phrase, the most interesting men alive. Driven and creative, organizational geniuses to a man. Capable of raising money for projects that would appear ludicrous were they written out on a cocktail napkin, much less detailed in a business plan.

Opposing these great men of vision is the James Bond. His tools amount to little more than rampant womanizing and martini-fueled mayhem -- basically being the biggest jerk in the bar. He's going to steal your girl, blow up the building and will probably receive a medal for his troubles.

LICENSE TO FAIL examines this intersection of entrepreneurial ambition and government overreach, ineach of the 22 James Bond films. Hilarious and insightful, LICENSE TO FAIL guarantees you will never look at a multinational firm's plans for global destruction the same way again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Patrick Leech
• Release date: Oct 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301415014

Kevin Patrick Leech

Kevin Patrick Leech works in the financial sector in New York City. Like a good Bond Villain, he started a business in Eastern Europe, a time during which he made some bad hiring decisions, expanded too rapidly, and blew a pile of money at the hotel where they shot the poker scene in Casino Royale. Ever since he earned an MBA from New York University, he has wondered why Bond Villains’ top advisors allow them to undermine great businesses with half-baked plans for global destruction.

Book preview

LICENSE TO FAIL:

The Business Mistakes of Bond Villains

By Kevin Patrick Leech

Published by Kevin Patrick Leech at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Kevin Patrick Leech

This is a work of parody.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

About the Author

Kevin Patrick Leech works in the financial sector in New York City. Like a good Bond Villain, he started a business in Eastern Europe, a time during which he made some bad hiring decisions, expanded too rapidly, and blew a pile of money at the hotel where they shot the poker scene in Casino Royale. Ever since he earned an MBA from New York University, he has wondered why Bond Villains’ top advisors allow them to undermine great businesses with half-baked plans for global destruction.

Follow him on Twitter @kevinleech or at www.kevinpatrickleech.com

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank some of the many people who have helped me refine the concept, proofread chapters, make contacts and also enlighten me on a few economic matters, including: Simon Flax, Ron Lieber, Dillon Miller, Ian Mount, David Sartorius, Matthew Schwab and Chance Woods Also thanks to Regis Sudo for doing such a dynamite job translating my cover idea into a real thing.

I’d also like to thank Christine Coady for being patient while I took over the living room, notebook in hand, to watch yet another Bond DVD.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A high-level briefing on License To Fail

DR. NO

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

GOLDFINGER

GOLDFINGER Bonus Analysis: A Hard Knox Life

THUNDERBALL

YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE

ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

LIVE AND LET DIE

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

MOONRAKER

THE COLD WAR YEARS: For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, The Living Daylights, License To Kill

A VIEW TO A KILL

GOLDENEYE

GOLDENEYE Bonus Analysis: These CHAPS had it all wrong

TOMORROW NEVER DIES

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH

DIE ANOTHER DAY

CASINO ROYALE

QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Eyes Only: A high-level briefing on

License To Fail

In the James Bond movies, the villains are often successful entrepreneurs who have built their own world-beating corporations with dominant market positions. Yet instead of continuing their firms' managed growth, they overreach with a plan that is always illegal and often involves global destruction. The question they never seem to ask themselves:

If you succeed in destroying the world, who will be your customers?

The value of a market is determined by many factors, but the most important certainly has to be that the people in the market are not all dead. The appeal of owning the number one business in a scorched-earth environment seems limited, yet creating such an environment is apparently the driving impulse for many of these entrepreneurs.

Regardless. we are less concerned with these entrepreneurs’ motivations than with their strategies and execution. In the pages of License To Fail, each film is presented as a case study, as if it were a real, historical business plan that went awry. We analyze the business decisions made by these Bond Villains, and run them up against real-world business best practices to see where things went wrong.

+++++

Of course, a batshit decision-making process does not tell the whole story of the downfall of these brave impresarios’.

Another onerous obstacle to achieving the hopes and dreams of the creative, aggressive businessman is government interference. License To Fail assumes you agree with the baseline assumption that business should be free to operate without hindrance from the world’s governments, their hired thugs and black helicopters. And yet we see again and again in these films, that the innovative executive – who almost always has created and sustained hundreds if not thousands of jobs – becomes the target of an extra-judicial government investigation.

This government intervention does not take the form of an inquiry into financial statements and transactions undertaken by the entrepreneur’s corporation; there is no audit; in fact, there is seldom if ever a charge leveled against these businessmen.

+++++

For reasons never made clear throughout the series’ 22-film history, the sovereign government of Britain feels the best course of investigation into a firm is to send James Bond, a sociopathic alcoholic assassin, to disrupt the entrepreneur’s work.

As we are focused here on the villains/entrepreneurs, Bond is relegated as a nameless government operative. License To Fail sees him as nothing more than a parasite and a hypocrite; he enjoys luxury hotel suites, bespoke Tom Ford suits, $50,000 wristwatches and customized German automobiles while living on a presumably modest state salary. He consumes the fruit of a productive life, while working to undermine legitimate capitalist operations. Even more shameful is that the tools he deploys in his work amount to little more than rampant womanizing and martini-fueled mayhem.

As if this waste of taxpayer money was not bad enough, the overreaching hand of government takes it even further. Britain has him operate almost exclusively in countries where he has no jurisdiction. It is curious that no one has questioned why a sovereign European Union country can hand out an internationally-valid license to kill, as if it were a Corporate Amex for Jerry in Sales.

+++++

Enough about him. We hope to learn from the efforts of the heroic entrepreneur here, not from the nihilistic actions of a state-funded reprobate.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld; Auric Goldfinger; Dr. No; Hugo Drax of Moonraker; Max Zorin of A View to a Kill; Trevelyan of GoldenEye; Le Chiffre of Casino Royale and the other leaders presented in these pages all make fascinating figures for examination. These really are, to borrow a current phrase, the most interesting men alive. Driven and creative, organizational geniuses to a man. Capable of convincing investors to put money