Warren Buffett said, “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”
What does this mean? I couldn’t figure it out. 
Is it that good managers lose reputation, or bad companies gain reputation? Who loses and who wins? Any thoughts?
what I got was bad reputation of a business can override brilliance of a management but could be wrong.
What I think is (unconfirmed) that when good guys invest themselves in bad plans, they lose reputation. Bad plans have nothing to lose. I am not sure. If this is true and confirmed by experts, I can give a practical example from my experience how this happens in transmitting electromagnetic radiation from one computer to another.
A piece of s**t car is still a piece of s**t car even if Dale Earnhardt is driving.
Avoid businesses with bad economics even if they have a great management team. Think airlines.
Yeah, I think all the posters above me have it right. Warren Buffett frequently emphasizes the importance of a good management team and corporate governance, but if the business is fundamentally broken, there’s not much a management team can do to revive it.
The real-life application of this is that frequently, investors will buy into a company with a new management team when they seemed to have good track records turning around prior businesses. Sometimes turnaround investing works, but more often than not people are either too early to the game (i.e. turnaround hasn’t shown signs of life yet and things get worse before they get better), or the turnaround just doesn’t happen…ever.
This is Buffett’s admonition that even a great captain frequently can’t save a sinking ship.
That f-ing pile of s-t never gets me very far.
Structurally bad businesses remain structurally bad no matter who is running them. True story.
So, you’re telling me my dream of being the CEO of a successful Laserdisk, MiniDisk, BetaMax, and HD-DVD manufacturer isn’t going to become a reality?
What about cassette tapes? Those are still “in” right?
Even good looks and personality will not make you a hit with the girls if you have a 3 inch…
^ True, but good looks + personality + $$$ will compensate. The last item can compensate for a lot.