Innovation on a Burning Platform

Necessity is the Mother of Invention. But research shows us that creativity emerges from time to think, backing off, having some slack in the system. In 1999 Coleman was on the ropes. The business had been sold and then sold again. Everyone who could leave had left. Imagine that you return to take over as President to see what you can do to salvage the situation …and then Walmart calls asking to see the plan. No plans exist. No one is home to make a plan.

What are the rules when all of the rules are broken?
How to be strategic when survival is the only strategy that makes sense?
How to be customer centered when the customer is out of patience?

Innovation doesn’t have to take the usual amount of time when you have an unusual amount of focus. We will see what we can learn from the extraordinary Coleman case study with examples from other burning platform cases (Hershey’s Dessert Bar, Johnson Controls Automotive and DuPont-Merck that we can apply to everyday business processes).