Off to a bad start

The country's second-largest mall operator has just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and I think I know why the company failed.
Its name is General Growth.
Which describes what's wrong with this company and many others that have gone bust.
That name implies that the firm's business is growth. Just growth. Getting bigger.
It doesn't imply getting better, or getting smarter. It doesn't say anything about pleasing its customers.
Growth, it seems to me, ought to come as a result of being a better, smarter company. Instead, General Growth apparently thought growth was its purpose. Generally speaking, though, companies that grow too fast get weaker instead of stronger. They add weak links, not strong ones. Strong companies don't want to get swallowed up; weak ones do, with gratitude.
This same misguided trajectory has led to disaster for banks, manufacturers, builders--yes, and governments.
A song in "The Music Man" says it all: you gotta know the territory. You might be terrific at running a mall in your home town; you know the customers, you know the marketers, you know the territory. But move from your home town across the country? You're likely to get lost. You'll look at balance sheets and demographics and past sales and projections, but you don't spend nearly enough time looking at the territory: the people who buy, the products and services they buy.
So your mall fails.
Diversification is often a good thing, but not always. Companies are almost always better off sticking with what they know, and learning even more about what they're really earning their money from.
It stands to reason.