There is no such thing as a new business mistake, just the same ones repackaged. Business failure always seems to follow the same path. Analyze each disaster and you will find similar mistakes are made every time. Blame it on human nature.

Now a new book In Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years, analyzed here, offers seven reasons why businesses go belly up:
1. pursuing non-existent synergies.
2. moving into an adjacent market that really isn't adjacent.
3. misguided consolidations.
4. faulty financial engineering.
5. rollups, or buying up businesses to create a monopoly.
6. staying the course instead of adapting.
7. chasing the wrong technology.

One of the authors, Paul B. Carroll, puts it bluntly: "There are no new mistakes, just the same ones being made over and over."

The one mistake he sees being done repeatedly is staying the course. General Motors' refusal to accept that market conditions were changing and the capacity of its executives to kid themselves is one case in point. Another good example is newspapers and the inability of newspaper executives to see they were in a declining market.

Chasing the wrong technology is another common blooper. Just as Rupert Murdoch who paid $580 million for MySpace before it was eclipsed by Facebook.

So how do companies avoid these common mistakes? The writers suggest allowing dissenting voices to be heard, examining previous failures under similar circumstances in history and forcing managers to look very carefully at worst case scenarios.

Unfortunately, that's the kind of mindset you don't see in too many companies.