In his first project for the Harvard Business Review, Stuart Bradford created a series of images illustrating the pitfalls of corporate mergers and acquisitions. The first of the three images starkly draws the ways in which mergers are often seen as nonsensical and crippled from the beginning. The horse can’t even make it out of the gate, let alone run the race. In the second image, the eagle appears to be in flight, but is weighted down and struggling to stay aloft. The third image illustrates what success looks like: start with a powerful, experienced climber and add resources to ensure it it gets to the top of the mountain.
