For example, Geoff Colvin, the Fortune senior editor-at-large who writes the 3M chapter, debunks the idea that the Post-it note came entirely from the company’s free-time endeavor. It was 3M’s culture that was truly responsible for one of its most famous products.
Beating the Giants
Some of the most inspirational examples are in the book’s less-familiar stories. How the company that invented liquid soap was able to fend off the behemoths of the industry is a noteworthy anecdote. The brainchild of Robert Taylor, the CEO of a small Minnesota company called Minnetonka Corp., liquid soap was the kind of small-enterprise innovation that is usually immediately copied by the corporate giants on the block. And, indeed, when Taylor’s liquid soap started flying off the shelves, Unilever, Colgate and Procter & Gamble started testing their own versions.
Taylor, however, devised a little-known strategy to keep control of the market: He found a way to block his giant competitors from accessing the plastic pumps used in the liquid soap bottles. At the time, only one company made the pumps. Taylor met with the CEO of the company and took the financial risk of ordering 100 million pumps, effectively ensuring a monopoly of the pumps for a full year. The strategy, which had never been attempted by such a small company, worked. By the time his competitors had access to the pumps, Taylor’s Softsoap brand was well established. The 18 great management decisions in this book are not ranked in any particular order. They stand as inspirational examples of the power of bucking conventional wisdom and making bold and innovative decisions.
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