AHs of corporations?

OK. Most AHs tend to focus on politics or wars, since those are so exciting and influential. But, what if someone changed the history of a corporation? That could impact a variety of fields, depending on what the corporation does.
I'm sure there are quite a few on here, but here's a few seeds of company AH's that you could look into:
-The recent "Disney War" has quite a few potential turning points for Disney, both major (WI Frank Wells's helicopter never crashed? (Much of Disney's recent history could be different...)) to minor (WI "A Cinderella Story" had been sent to Disney?) and all sorts of ones in between (WI ABC had listened to Michael Eisner and not approved "Lost"?) (WI Someone besides Johnny Depp had been cast as Jack Sparrow?)
-My dad worked for a division of the late, lamented Warner-Lambert pharmaceutical company (bought out by Pfixer in 2000...). The history of the corporation and its subsidiaries has a lot of strange byways. (Parke-Davis was the first company granted a license to make animal vaccines. They also made Dilantin, a pioneering anti-epileptic medicine (which financier Jack Dreyfus promoted (without the official approval of Parke-Davis) as a wonder drug to cure numerous conditions...), vaccines against cancer (a loooong time ago- unsure if they worked), sold cocaine, and made an extract of peyote at the request of Aleister Crowley.) (American Chicle, bought out by Warner-Lambert was the first company to make chewing gum, inspired by one the founder's business relationships with Santa Ana) (Don't get me started on the history of the Wilkinson Sword Company, which was bought out by Warner-Lambert to add to the Schick brand of razors, and resulted in W-L owning a maker of swords.)
-If a corporation decides to stick to its core businesses and dump others, a lot of things could change, especially for a conglomerate like 3M.

Any other ideas or thoughts?
 
I don't know, I just want to see the effects of a world where Apple is the computer giant, not Microsoft.
Apple isn't that small of a company either ;)
As for company diversions, I would like to see some involving video game, movie, and comic book companies.
 
E.H. Harriman, business tycoon, bought control of both the Union Pacific & Southern Pacific (successor to the Central Pacific of transcontinental railroad fame) Railroads in the early 1900s, basically forcing them together through a dynastic personal union. After his death in 1909, the two companies quickly split apart again, squabbling over control of stretches of track and generally not being as amiable about the whole thing as they could've.


Two what-ifs can come out of this, just off the top of my head:

-What if Harriman's railroad empire had not fallen apart so quickly after his death? A Southern/Union Pacific merger would create a massive railroad system stretching from Omaha to San Francisco. Antitrust cases would not be unexpected, but especially if a SP/UP case could be dragged out past the end of World War One and into the Harding administration, they could make it through alright.

-A major point of contention between the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific following Harriman's death was control of the old Central Pacific lines in central California. SP officials claimed that the Central Pacific tracks rightfully belonged to their company since they were the successors to the old Central Pacific, while the Union Pacific claimed the Central Pacific for themselves because they could already taste the money. In OTL, the Southern Pacific barely got away with keeping the CP lines. What if the Union Pacific had gained the Central Pacific lines following the death of E.H. Harriman ad collapse of the merger?
 
Last edited:
Right. I've recently done a scenario where both DC and Marvel comics go out of business in the late 70s/early 80s; as an addendum how about this: after they go under, Pacific Comics somehow buys their IP and publishes the titles themselves. Superman joins the Avengers, Captain America heads up the Justice League; all manner of craziness ensues.

Another one: Instead of being a colossal flop, the Beatles Apple Records is a huge commercial success and goes on to become the biggest record company in the world. This could have a major impact on Mr. Job's little business endeavour - or at least, on it's name.
 
Last edited:
I speculated recently (just a little) about what would happen if Sarah Michelle Gellar never left the soap opera world to be Buffy. It might never have got off the ground and Whedon would have remained mainly a script writer without a fanatical following.
 
A alternate history of the Nokia Company

Nokia, until recently one of the most influential companies in Finland, was born in its most recent form in 1966 when the Finnish Rubber Factory, Nokia Oy and the Finnish Cable Factory merged to become Oy Nokia Ab.

The Cable Factory's had branched out to electronic technology when its electronics department brought out the first VHF set in 1965. A brief period of co-operation with the Salo Radio Company gave birth to the first Finnish mobile network, the ARP, in the early 70s. In 1978 the radio and mobile phone research and production was sold to the Salo Company, later Salora Mobile Phones, which in 1996 become a subsidiary of the Swedish Ericsson Company.

In 1976, the Nokia had built Europe's first electronic switchboard, the Nokia DX200. From the mid-70s, the company started to concentrate in phone networks with the state owned Televa Company. This business proved very successful, and in the 80s Nokia branched out to computers with the MikroMikko product family. In the mid-80s, the phone networks and computers thus become the core business of Nokia. Wood processing plants and the rubber factories were sold off by 1991.

In the 80s and early 90s, Nokia was a big player in Finnish bilateral trade with the Soviet Union. Earlier, the company had already provided, for example, cables and cable technology to the Soviets. Between 1982 and 1988, the Soviet telephone network was modernised by technology and hardware provided by Nokia. This was a controversial move, not least because of the international tensions involved, but at the time it seemed to pay off. The company saw strong growth due to the Soviet trade.

In the field of computers, the co-operation, supported by the Finnish state gave birth to a groundbreaking joint effort with the Soviets, Project START, beginning in 1985. Started in the early part of Gorbatchev's perestroika, START brought together the growing Finnish computer industry and the Soviet research centers in Moscow, Tallinn and Novosibirsk, as well as the USSR Academy of Sciences.

In 1990, after the initial research into the possibilities of joint ventures was concluded, it was decided to create a company partly owned by Nokia, the Soviet state and Finland, for manufacture and development of both computer hardware and software. This was to be called the "Nokia Soviet-Finnish Electronic Company", or Nosofikom in short. Because of various protests by Western governments and business interests, and partly due to increasing internal instability of the USSR the project, however, was constantly delayed.

Meanwhile, Nokia attempted to expand into Western Europe, starting with neutral nations such as Switzerland and Austria: NATO members were reluctant to work with the company due to its Soviet ties. Technologically, nobody denied the high level of the Nokia products. Because of the politics, however, joint ventures with AEG and the Dutch NFK Cable collapsed in 1990-1991.

As the USSR disintegrated in 1992, the Nosofikom collapsed completely. The fall of the USSR also contributed to the decline of Nokia, which had received by far the most of its income from the bilateral trade. In 1993, because of financial difficulties the company had to back down from its already concluded deals for modernizing the Austrian and Swiss phone networks. It also had to sell off its newly-built MikroMikko factory in Ireland.

Recession in Finland and the quick liberalisation of the Finnish marketplace also contributed to the company's hardship, and by 1995 the major owners of Nokia, including the Finnish state, saw no other options than to dismantle and sell the company. Later, this move has been harshly critizised by economists, who say that the liquidation of Nokia amounted to to a destruction of the bedrock of Finnish electronic knowhow, at bargain prices.

The same year, the network operations were sold to the German Siemens and the MikroMikko computer production to IBM. The production of both network and computer components were to remain in Finland, in Vantaa (Siemens Nokia) and Tampere (IBM Finland).

Nokia Cable, the only perennially profitable part of the company and the part that stayed in Finnish hands since the upheaval of the 90s, was bought in its entirety by GE Europe in 2005, thus concluding a century-old legacy of the Nokia Company. Recently, due to the global recession, both Siemens and IBM abandoned their Finnish operations.
 
Top