General Electric (GE)

General Electric was once America's most valuable company - $600 billion at its peak. By 2020, it was worth $100 billion and breaking itself into three pieces. The collapse wasn't a failure of innovation or competition. It was biological: GE built an organism that couldn't survive its own complexity.

Under Jack Welch, GE pioneered 'rank and yank' - firing the bottom 10% annually. This despotic culture drove short-term performance but destroyed the ability to take risks or collaborate. When Welch's successor Jeff Immelt inherited the throne, he got an organization traumatized into compliance. Meanwhile, GE branched everywhere without discipline: finance, media, healthcare, power, aviation, appliances, plastics. GE Capital alone grew to $650 billion in assets, requiring a $140 billion government bailout in 2008.

The real killer was the Fire Suppression Trap. During the profitable years, GE avoided organizational fires - accumulating 250+ businesses, 9+ organizational layers, incomprehensible matrix structures. When markets shifted in 2008 and 2016, all that accumulated fuel burned uncontrollably. The stock collapsed from $60 to $6. GE demonstrates that preventing small organizational disturbances doesn't create stability - it creates catastrophic fragility.