The US magazine Business 2.0 lists in their latest issue what it calls the '101 most dumbest moments in business'. Unsurprisingly, more than 90% happened in America, and 5% in Europe.

...which kind of leaves us in the Asia Pacific with a warm feeling of superiority...

Some of The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business include:

"..A dozen Burger King marketing execs suffer first- and second-degree burns while walking over hot coals as part of a team-building retreat in October. One of the injured, a VP for product marketing aptly named Dana Frydman, tries to put a positive spin on having her feet flame-broiled like so much ground chuck. "It made you feel a sense of empowerment and that you can accomplish anything," she tells the Miami Herald..."

We often wonder how exactly organizations expect to improve team work by comitting their staff to torturous outdoor obstacle courses, and hand-holding retreats. Given all the research evidence that such events rarely cause a demonstrable effect back at the workplace where it actually counts, most of the benefit seems to be personal - and comes from the various illicit affairs carried on far away from family in the evening.

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Eleven years after McDonald's announces that it has started cooking its fries in "100 percent vegetable oil" -- and one month after a Seattle lawyer files suit on behalf of Hindus and vegetarians who interpreted that to mean that the fries are meat-free -- the fast-food chain concedes that the "natural flavoring" in its fries is, in fact, beef fat.

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In his testimony before Congress, Jeffrey Skilling claims that he is unable to recall a board of directors committee meeting in which records show that he had approved several partnership deals, in part because "the room was dark, quite frankly, and people were walking in and out of the meeting."

Now, why doesn't that sound unfamiliar...

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Eli Lilly sends a mass e-mail in July to users of its antidepressant Prozac but neglects to use the "bcc" header, further depressing its customers by disclosing their online identities to one another.

For the other 97, and before we get sued for copyright, you will have to go to the article itself.. apart from this quite startling quote (Number 33 of the 101) -

"We've been doubling sales every 18 months. However, when you start from zero, it takes a long while." -- Stephen Yeo, a marketing director at Windows-terminal manufacturer Wyse, explaining his company's less-than-meteoric rise, to ZDNet UK