Considered America's largest electricity and natural gas company, Enron Corporation has grown tremendously since its humble beginnings in 1985. Over the span of 15 years, Enron Corporation employed 21,000 more workers than 40 countries and revenues amounting to 111 billion. Enron has been very successful, even receiving the title of America's most innovative company for 6 consecutive years. However, what was greater than Enron's success was the collapse of the company, widely known as the Enron scandal. The question is: what initially caused Enron to collapse? This is an analysis of the significant players and factors that contributed to the failure of the Enron Corporation. For starters, a key player involved in Enron's failure was CEO Kenneth Lay. Kenneth Lay, also known as "Kenny Boy", founded the Enron Corporation in 1985. However, in the 1990s, Enron's growth included large investments in the brokerage and trading of energy, global commodities, and other diverse forms of options trading. This was the beginning of the end for Enron, as Lay built the Enron Corporation on unethical accounting practices and a lack of reported financial losses. That transformed what was once an ordinary natural gas company into an electric trading giant with a net worth of $68 billion. In the text, Damage Control, The Essential Lessons of Crisis Management, 2011, written by Eric Dezenhall and John Weber, four categories are listed that contribute to crisis situations: public relations workers, leaders, lawyers and technical experts. According to Dezenhall, Lay falls into the leader category. Leader characteristics value judgment of information, impatience, and experienced failure. Leaders also have characteristics of bubble-titis. In the leader's “bubble,” they have the confidence not to ... middle of paper ... ask for a proactive approach to crisis control because it is the safest and most effective way for the company to manage a crisis. crisis and emerge victorious. Those companies that practice the necessary crisis management are able to handle the problem without further damage, while managing to maintain their respected reputation. This is something Lay, Skilling, and Fastow practiced under the Enron Corporation, which ended in bankruptcy and the loss of jobs, health benefits, and pension checks to thousands of employers. Unfortunately, the big cause of Enron's collapse was the greed, untrustworthiness, and unethical practices of Enron bigwigs Kenneth Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andrew Fastow, considered the smartest guys in the room. References: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/enron-the-smartest-guys-in-the-room/Damage Control, The Essential Lessons of Crisis Management, 2011,