COVERSTORY
How Failure
Breeds Success
Everyone fears failure. But breakthroughs
depend on it The best companies enibrace
their mistakes and iearn from them.
BY JENA MCGREGOR
EVER HEARD OF CHOGLIT? HOW ABOUT OK SODA OR SURGE?
Long after " New Coke" became nearly synonymous with innovation failure, these products joined Coca-Cola Co.'s graveyard
of beverage busts.
Choglit, in case you blinked and missed it, was a chocolateflavored milk drink test-marketed with Nestlé in 2002. OK Soda,
unveiled in 1994, tried to capture Generation X with edgy marketing. The "OK Manifesto," parts of which were printed on
cans in an attempt at hipster irony, asked : "What's the point of
OK Soda?" It turned out customers wondered the same thing.
And while Surge did well initially, tliis me-too Mountain Dew
later did anything but. Sales hcgan drying up afterfiveyears.
Given that history, failure hardly seems like a subject Chairman and CEO E. Neville Isdell would want to trot out infrontof
investors. But Isdell did just that, deliberately airing the topic at
Coke's annual meeting in April. "You will see some failures," he
told the crowd. "As we take more risks, this is something we
must accept as part of the regeneration process."
Warning Coke investors that the company might experience
some ftops is a little like warning Atlantans they might experience afternoon thunderstorms in July. But Isdell thinks it's vital. He wants Coke to take bigger risks, and to do that, he knows
he needs to convince employees and shareholders that he will
42 I BusinessWeek I July 10. 2006
tolerate the failures that vidll inevitably result. That's the only
way to change Coke's traditionallyrisk-averseculture. And given the importance of this goal, there's no podium too big for
sending the signal. "Using [the annual meeting] occasion elevates the statement to another order of importance," Isdell said
in an interview with BusinessWeek.
CLOSETO BLASPHEMY
WHILE FEW CEOS are as candid about the potential for failure
as Isdell, many are wrestling vnth the same problem, trying to
get their organizations to cozy up to the risk-taking that innovation requires. A warning: It's not going to be an easy shift. Alter years of cost-cutting initiatives and grovting job insecurity,
most employees don't exactly feel like putting themselves on
the line. Add to that the heightened expectations by management on individual performance, and it's easy to see why so
many opt to play it safe.
Indeed, for a generation of managers weaned on therigorsof
Six Sigma error-elimination programs, embracing failuregasp!—is close to blasphemy. Stefan H. Thonike, a professor at
Harvard Business School and author oí Experimentation Matters, says that when he talks to business groups, '^I try to be
COVERSTORY
way that accounts for these opposing pressures. At IBM Reprovocative and say: 'Failure is not abad thing.' I always have
search, engineers are evaluated on both one- and three-year time
lots of people staring at me, [thinking] 'Have you lost your
frames. The one-year term determines the bonus, while the
mind?' That's O.K. It gets their attention. [Failure] is so importhree-year petiod decides rank and salary. The longer frame can
tant to the experimental process."
help neutralize a year of setbacks. "A three-year evaluation cycle
That it is. Crucial, in fact. After all, thaf s why true, breaksends an important message to our researchers, demonstrating
through innovation—an imperative in today's globally comour commitment to investing in the early, risky stages of innovapetitive world, in which product cycles are shorter than ever—
tion," says Armando Garcia,
^
is so extraordinarily hard. It requires well-honed organizations
vice-president for technical
built for efficiency and speed to do what feels unnatural: Exstrategy and worldwide opplore. Experiment. Foul up, sometimes. Then repeat.
erations at IBM Research.
Granted, not all failures are praiseworthy. Someflopsare just
that: bad ideas. The eVilla, Sony Corp.'s $500 " Internet appliance." The Pontiac Aztek, General Motors
Corp.'s ugly duckling "crossover" SUV. For good
measure, well throw in our own industry's spectacularly useless flop: the CueCat A marketer's dream, the
device, which was launched in 2000 (when else?),
scanned bar codes from magazine and newspaper
ads, directing readers to Web sites so they wouldn't
have to go to the trouble
to type in the URL.
Ford
Xerox
But intelligent failHuía Burger,
Edsel,
Mode/A Copier
ures—those that happen
1962
(the "Ox Box"), 1949
1957
early and inexpensively
Founder Ray Kroc tested
Known as the Titanic of tlie
The first manually operated
•«I and that contribute new
this cheese-topped grilled
industry, this overhyped,
xerographic printer, the
9 N O insights about your cuspineapple on a bun for
oversized,
and
overpriced
- J
Model
A
was
slow,
messy,
Need
inspiration?
tomers—should be more
; !&
Chicagoans who avoided
car
had
abysmal
sales.
hard to use. Businesses
than just tolerable. They
Many companies and
eating meat on Fridays,
Customers even scoffed at
were
unconvinced
and
should be encouraged.
have
founa
But customers abstained.
the
stodgy
name.
After
just
largely stuck with carbon
"Figuring out how to
The company learned
over 2,800 of the 1960
W — i^
success
in
the
paper.
But
10
years
later,
master this process of
meatless didn't have to
models were churned out,
Xerox launched the fully
failing fast and failing
ashes of their
mean wacky, and the next
the Edsel was history.
automated
Model
914,
cheap and fumbling tomemorable
year a franchise owner
Chastened, Ford did its
transforming modern
ward success is probably
came up with a tastier
research and tuned into
misses:
office work,
the most important
alternative for
customers'call for stylish
thing companies have to
hamburger-free Fridays;
atfordability, launching the
get good at," says Scott
theRiet-O-Fish, nowa
legendary Ford Mustang
Anthony, the managing
McDonald's classic.
in 1964.
director at consulting firm Innosight.
"Getting good" at failure, however, doesn't mean
creating anarchy out of organization. It means leaders—not just on a podium at the annual meeting, but
in the trenches, every day—who create an environment safe for taking risks and who share stories of
their own mistakes, it means bringing in outsiders
unattached to a project's past. It means carving out
In addition to making sure performance evaluations take a
time to reflect on failure, not just success.
long-term view, managers should also think about celebrating
smart failures. (Those who repeat their mistakes, of course,
should hardly be rewarded.) Thomas D. Kuczmarski, a Chicago
new-product development consultant, even proposes "failure
: PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANT, it means designing ways to
i measure performance that balance accountability viâth the free- parties" as a way of recognizing that it's part of the creative
process. "What most companies do is put a wall around a fail' dom to make mistakes. People may fear failure, but they fear the
ure as if ifs radioactive," says Kuczmarski.
I consequences of it even more. "The performance culture realIntuit Inc., based in Mountain View, Calif., recently celebrati ly is in deep conflict with the learning culture," says Paul J. H.
ed an adventurous marketing campaign that failed. The comI Schoemaker, CEO of consulting firm Decision Strategies Interpany had never targeted young tax filers before, and in early
¡ national Inc. " It's an unusual executive who can balance these."
2005 it tried to reach them through an ill-fated attempt to com\
Some oi^anizations have tried to measure performance in a
Famous
FAILURE PARTIES
"Most companies...puta wall around a fail
44 ! BusinessWeek I July 10, 2006
bine tax-filing drudgery with hip-hop style. Through a Web site
called RockYourRefund.com, Intuit offered young people dis[ counts to travel site Expédia Inc. and retailer Best Buy Co. and
the ability to deposit tax refunds directly into prepaid Visa cards
issued by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons.
But even hip-hop stars can't make 1040s cool enough to get
young adults excited about taxes. "We did very few returns"
through the site, says Rick Jensen, vice-president for product
management at Intuifs consumer tax group. "It was almost a
rounding error." Through a postmortem process, the team that
developed the campaign documented its insights, such as the
now finding fans among large companies. Eggers hopes future conferences -will feature even more presentations on failures. She also plans to distribute "narrative storytelling booklets" about failed projects so people can "feel the pain."
Unlike Intuit, most companies don't spend enough time and
resources looking backward, says Chris TVimble, a professor at
the TYick School of Business at Dartmouth College and co-author
of Í0 Rüksßjr Strategic Innovators. That's a mistake. "How do you
leam if you don't examine the past?" asks Trimble.
General Electric Co. is trying to do just that. The company,
which is well-known for sharing best practices across its many
Sony
Coca-Cola
Pfizer
Betamax,
1975
Kellogg's
New Coke,
1985
Siídenafíl,
1991
Breakfast Mates.
1998
Coca-Cola rolled out a wellresearched, taste-tested
new formula to energize its
lethargic brand. Buta
firestorm of consumer
protest led to New Coke's
demise after 79 days, when
the original was brought
back with great fanfare.
Today, New Coke is a
celebrated chapter in
Coke lore.
First tested on humans in
1991, Sildenafil didn't prove
effective for ifs initial
indication: angina, or chest
pain. After patients reported
erections as a side effect,
Pfizer began testing the
compound for erectile
dysfunction. In 1998, Viagra
became the first drug to
treat the condition, and the
blockbuster has been a
household name ever since.
This cereal-and-milk
combo product was lost on
consumers who found the
non refrigerated milk
unappetizing. The
inconvenient convenience
food was not nearly as
appealing as the real thing
(above). More mindful of
its harried customers'
needs, Kellogg has
expanded its line of handy
breakfast bars.
Sony kept tight controls
over the license for its
video recording
technology while its rival,
JVC, shared its VHS
format. Now, Sony faces
another format war, pitting
its Blu-ray nextgeneration DVD against
Toshiba's HD-DVD. This
time, Sony has assembled
a powerful cadre of
backers. Will it win?
The first commercial
personal computer
featuring a graphical user
interface (GUI), Lisa didn't
sell because it was sluggish
and expensive. But Lisa's
GUI helped to inspire
Apple's famously userfriendly product line, from
the crisp Macintosh
interface of the iMac to the
sleek and simple iPod.
fact that Gen Yers don't visit destination Web sites that feel too
much like advertising. Then, on a stage at the Dolce Hayes
Mansion in San Jose, Calif., last October in front of some 200
Intuit marketers, the team received an award from Intuit Chairman Scott Cook. "Ifs only a failure if we fail to get the learning," says Cook.
In addition to postmortems, Intuit has begun plucking insights from its flops through sessions that focus on failure.
Jana Eggers, who heads up Intuit's Innovation Lab, held the
first such "When Learning Hurts" session recently. There, she
recounted the story of QuickBase, a software application that
failed for its initial market, small business customers, but is
units, has recently begun formally discussing failures, too. Last
September the company set up a two-hour conference call for
managers of eight "imagination breakthroughs" that didn't
live up to expectations and were being shelved, or "retired," in
GE'S parlance. ("Imagination breakthroughs"—IBs—are new
businesses or products that have potential sales of $100 million within three to five years.)
Such discussions can be nerve-racking, especially in companies where failure has traditionally been met with tough consequences. That was the case at GE, which is now three years
into the effort spearheaded by Chairman and CEO Jefifrey R. Immelt to make innovation the new mantra at the $150 billion be-
as if it's radioactive," says one consultant
Julv 10. 2006 I BusinessWeek I 45
COVER STORY
Helen Greiner
-Co-founder and chairman
¡Robot
hen we first started working
with the military in the early
1990s, lied the design of an
amphibious mine-clearing
robot, called Ariel. It walked
in the suri and acted like a crab. It was a "12degree of freedom" walking robot, meaning
there are 12 motors to drive 12 joints. At the
time, it was the most advanced walking
robot in the world. We built technologies that
we knew from the labs. Buf there was a very
strong missing component of the user's
needs. It couldn't walk far enough, it
couldn't carry the payload it would need to
carry, and it was too complex.
W
When we demonstrated Ariel, the
reaction was: "iRobot is doing some really
innovative and futuristic stuff, but it doesn't
solve a current need." It started the
perception of our company along a line
My favorite mistake..M
I wouldn't choose now: We do innovation for
innovation's sake. Now I believe the
perception of iRobot is we build practical
and affordable robots that help people.
After Ariel, I was invited to an Army
Rangers demonstration and brought
another prototype to solicit input from
soldiers. That input led to the design of our
PackBot-we've delivered 500 of them so
far—a bomb-disposal robot that has been
credited with saving the lives of dozens of
soldiers. Innovation in our field can lead us
in the wrong direction to the most exotic
hemoth. "I had some offline conversations with some of the IB
leaders reassuring them that this was not a call where they were
going to get their pink slips," says Patia McGrath, a GE marketing director who helped put together the call. "The notion of
taking big swings, and that it's O.K. to miss the swing, is something that's quite new with Jeff."
Some companies have gone even further, taking a compre-
creation. 1 learned to talk to users and get
input before designing. Don't think that you
are going to design something that has all of
the bells and whistles, then reduce the costs
sometime later.
hensive look at all their previous failures. That was the case at
Corning Inc., which found itself teetering on the brink of
bankruptcy after the once red-hot market for its optical fiber
collapsed during the telecom bust. Following that debacle,
then-Coming GEO James R. Houghton asked Joseph A.
Miller Jr., executive vice-^president and chief technology officer, to produce an in-depth review of the company's 150-year
history of innovation, documenting
both failures and successes.
One of the failed products Coming investigated was the DNA microarray, or
chip, which the company began developing in 1998. Genomics research was
heating up at the time, with Dr. J. Craig
Venter launching Celera Genomics that
year. Coming, which makes laboratory
sciences equipment, saw an opportunity.
Its DNA chip was designed to print all
28,000 human genes onto a set of slides
that could be used by researchers. By
2000, Coming had invested $100 milHon in the project and announced a
partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
mark that you couldn't get out
unless you buffed it with
sandpaper. It was a classic case
oí ¡ust not asking the right
questions up front.
This one was my mistake. 1 let
the need for speed overwhelm
doing enough up-front market
research and testing. It was a $20
million mistake. We caught it after
about three months. Customers
would complain, At first, you go
"WE WERE LATE"
BUT WHILE CORNING was trying to
through this denial phase: "You
don't understand" the product
and stuff like that.
It made me leam about
listening better. I'm more
disciplined on the up-front stuff
now than I was then. I wanted to
do something big and exciting, and I wanted
to do it now rather than waif a year. I fessed
up: stepped into it, made up for the financial
hit we had to take on it [by exceeding sales
targets on other products], and made good
to the customers, I think that t got better at
understanding the need for research and
more thought up front, so you don't have to
redo things.
launch the chip, another company,
Afíymetrix Inc., commercialized one.
"They had the dominant design on
microchips, and they were the first
out," says Peter F. Volanakis, now
Coming's chief operating officer. "We
were late." Quality problems plagued
-Chairman and CEO
the project, and customers had not
General Electric
been brought in early. With Corning in
a freefall financially, the DNA chip was
ni992,1 was running all the
killed in 2001.
commercial operations for the plastics
Still, the experience ojíened Coming
business at GE. We had a product
up to a whole new market. "We had discalled Nuvel, which was a sheet
You're never allowed in GE to make the
covered the marketplace of drug discovproduct that would go over wood to fry
same mistake twice. You're allowed to make
ery," says Miller. By combining its introto create the poor man's Corian countertop.
the mistake once. If you try something and it
duction to the drug research market
Turns out the thing just didn't work. Any time
fails but you went about if the fight way and
with another failed business, photonics,
you dropped a coin on it, if would leave a
you learned irom it, that's not a bad thing.
which manipulates data using light
waves, it created Epic, a revolutionary
technoiogy for drug testing that it will launch this fall. By using
could reach $ 100 million to $300 million a year, and more than
light waves instead offluorescentdyes. Epic promises to accel$500 million annually long-term.
erate dramatically the process of testing potential drugs and
As Coming learned ÍTom the DNA chip and with Epic, getimprove its accuracy.
ting potential users in before a project goes too far helps to
One key difference? This time, 18 pharmaceutical companies
prove the market for it. But outside perspectives can also help
have tested Epic before the launch. By 2010 to 2012, Jeff"
neutralize emotions and biases about failing product lines, says
Mooney, who led Epic's development, projects that Epic sales
Duke University Fuqua School of Business professor William
Jeffrey R. Immelt
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS.
Sun believes sharing is the way to create better ideas. That's why we've teamed up with
BusinessWeek to offer you an opportunity to share your comments. Join the conversation about
this week's Cover Story at businessweek.com/coverstory.
micfosystems
COVERSTORY
Boulding. In research published in the April issue ofûie Journal
of Marketing, Boulding and his colleagues contradict the common notion that teams cling to a project because they want to
save face or salvage the "sunk costs." Rather, the problem Is
with the objectivity oí the people involved. "Even if you're not
on the hook in terms offinancialembarrassment or psychological embarrassment," says Boulding, "you did form beliefs, and
that causes you to warp new feedback."
That's why W.L. Gore & Associates Inc. in Newark, Del.,
makers of the waterproof fabric Gore-Tex, recognizes outsiders—people within Gore but not on the product development team—who make the call on projects that need to be
pulled. When Brad Jones led Gore's Industrial Products Div.,
which makes sealants and filtration systems, he handed out
"Sharp Shooter" trophies to these outside managers when a
project was effectively killed. These marksmen, so to speak,
fi^ed from the trappings of familiarity, can identiiy potential
snags that the team may have overlooked. "We're eñusive in
our thanks for that contribution," says Jones. "We ask them to
write up what they learned from it, and how we could have
made the decision [to kill the project] faster."
FIND YOUR OWN FLAWS
THE MINDSET THAT Gore looks for in these outsiders—the
ability to home in on uncertainties—requires employees to reframe their thinking. Most people naturally seek positive outcomes and set about trying to prove that an experiment works.
But designers, inventors, and scientists, all models for com-
FAILING FORWARD
More Mistakes: In an expanded slide show, more leaders share
stories about their failures and what they learned from t h e m
Learning on the Front Lines: How the U.S. Army's after-action
review process can help corporations learn from their mistakes
The Story Behind the Story: For a podcast interview with
Management Editor Jena McGregor by Executive Editor John
A. Byrne, go to businessweek.ccmÄearch/podcasting.htm
J
1
J
http:/Awíw.busír)e5sweek.comA3rtras
panies struggling to be more creative, take the opposite tack.
They try to prove themselves wrong. That focus on potential
flaws makes failure, and the lessons that come with it, happen
earlier. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School
wdio has studied how oiganizations leam from failure, says managers would do well to think more like scientists. "Failure provides more learning' in a stricdy logical or technical sense" than
success, she says. "Ifs a principle of the scientific method that
you can only disconfirm, never confirm, a hypothesis."
Failure's capacity to teach is exactly why venture capitalists
often look for managers to run startups whose resumes include
experience with a flop. Gordon McCallum, CEO for Richard
Branson's Virgin Management Ltd., can point to managers
within Virgin who might have been overlooked by other companies because of failures in their careers. He's also quick to
PLAYBOOK: BEST-PRACTICE IDEAS
A Formula for Failure
it's innovation's great paradox: Success-that is, true breakthroughs-usuaily comes through failure.
How to help your team get comfortable with taking risks and learning from their mistakes.
Formalize Forums
For Failure
Share
Personal Stories
Prove Yourseif
Wrong, Not Right
To keep failures and the valuable
lessons they offer from getting
swept under the rug. carve out time
for reflection. GE has recently
begun sharing lessons Irom failures
by bringing together managers
whose "Imagination Breakthrough"
efforts are put on the sheli.
If employees hear leaders
discussing their own failures.
they'll feel more comfortable
talking about their own. But it s
not just the CEO's job-front-line
leaders are eyen more important.
says Harvard Business School
professor Amy Edmondson. "That
person needs to be inviting,
curious, and the first to say:
'I made a mistake.'"
The tendency for development
teams is to look for supporting,
rather than countervailing,
evidence. "You have to reframe
what you're seeking in the early
days," says Innosight's Scott
Anthony. "You're not really
seeking proof that you have the
right answer. It's more about
testing to prove yourself wrong."
Move
Goalposts
ii'ovation requires flexibility in
meeting goals, since early
predictions are often little more
than educated guesses. Intuit's
Scott Cook even suggests that
teams developing new products
ignore forecasts in the early days.
"For every one of our failures, we
had spreadsheets that looked
awesome," he says.
48
BusinessWeek I July 10, 2006
Bring in
Outsiders
Outsiders can help neutralize the
emotions and biases that prop up
a ñop. Customers can be the most
valuable. After its DNA chip failed,
Corning brought pharma
companies in early to test its new
dmg-discovery technology. Epic.
Celebrate
Smart Failures
Managers should design
performance-management
systems that reward risk-taking
and foster a long-term view.
But they should also celebrate
failures that teach something
new, energizing people to try again
and offering them closure.
COVERSTORY
note that eiTors on the job, as long as they aren't repeated, are
not only supported, but valued.
One example: Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd.'s J2000 seats, a
$67 million investment made in 2000 to create new sleeper
seats that reclined at an angle for the airline's "upper-class"
seats. Although sleeper seats had long existed in first class, airlines had not yet adopted them for business class. Virgin was
the first to announce it would be offering "a bed in business,"
says Joe Feny, Virgin's head of design, who led the design of the
J2000 seats. Within a year, however. Virgin's idea was oneupped by its chief competitor, British Airways PLC, which rolled
out a truly flat bed. While customers were initially enthusiastic
about the J2000, some complained about sliding and di.scom-
E. Neville Isdell
-Chairman and CEO
Coca-Cola
I
was [Cuke's] division president for
Central Europe between "85 and '88. We
were doing a restructuring to get 116
bottlers to exchange their equity for
ownership in a single bottler in
Germany. We took the plan to Atlanta and
presented it to the key people we were
responsible to and got the support that we
needed. We went back and went on a road
show around Germany for three days. We
50 I BusinessWeek I July 10. 2006
fort. In the end, says McCallum, it "was wildly unsuccessful.
Everybody acknowledged that it was not as good a product as
our principal competitors'." jarees Ferry: "We were an alsoran, which didn't really sit well with us."
But Ferry didn't get the ax. In fact. Virgin entrusted him to
take on another extraordinary risk, committing a huge $127
million to an overhaul of the airline's upper-class seats years
before tlie traditional product life cycle would have ended.
And the company stuck by its investment even after September 11. The new version, launched in 2003, has been a solid
success. Called the "upper-class suite," Ferry's makeover
made a design leap beyond merely being flat. Flight attendants flip over the back and seat cushions to make the bed, al-
reckoned we would get [support] from
around 70% of the bottlers, and about 30%
would reiect us, but that would be enough to
get critical mass, End of Day Three, we were
celebrating because we had a maior bottier,
who we thought would not agree, say, "It
makes sense."
Then a call came in from the international
president-at about U o'clock at nightsaying: "Stop. You're going to take this offer
completely off the table."
What I had underestimated was the
degree to which there were multiple
constituencies that needed to be covered
in order to ensure that the back-door, old
relationships that some ot the bottlers had
builf up could not stop us. Phone calls
came in to headquarters from bottlers
around the world, asking: "What does this
mean for me?" I had not thought that
through well enough.
I like telling that story because I failed,
and the lesson I learned is you have to look
outside the narrow view you have of where
the areas of influence exist. Be sure that
you have them all covered, Now I think in a
different way about where obiections might
come from. If you're going to create
change, you're going to have people who
you're not going to convince. You can
neutralize some of them, but I had not
done that,
COVERSTORY
lowing for different foam consistencies for sitting and sleeping. While Ferry hoped the new seats would eventually improve Virgin's business-class market share by 1%, they've already exceeded that goal.
TREMORS AND THRILLS
A COMPANY'S REACTION in the face of intelligent failures,
whether it's Virgin reinvesting in a pricey design revamp or Intuit giving an award to its marketing team, can send tremors or
thrills through a culture. If top executives are accepting, people
will embrace risk. But if managers react harshly, people will retreat from it.
That's something Eric Brinker, JetBlue Airways Corp.'s director of brand management and customer experience, wants
to make sure doesn't happen. Last year, JetBlue, which tries to limit its in-flight snack
mix to keep costs low and reduce complexity,
began hearing that some of its customers
wanted a healthier choice. Brinker and his
Pete Carroll
-Head Footbail Coach,
University of Southern Caíifornia
W
hen I left my job as defensive
coordinator of the San
Francisco 49ers, I had two
opportunities, at the St. Louis
Rams and the New England
Patriots. The Rams had had problems, and
expectations would be low. On the other
hand, the Patriots had iust come off losing
the Super Bowl. What's more, [former head
coach] Bill Parcells had iust left the team.
I went to the harder situation. My
mistake was not to evaluate the impact of
the guy I was following-one of the most
heralded coaches in the NFL, a guy with
great charisma and great stature. The
challenge of it—all the pressure of trying to
maintain the program-blinded me to how
difficult it would be. Even going 27>21 over
three years. I still couldn't keep up with
expectations, and I lost my job because we
didn't win enough,
I thought I could handle anything,
thought I could follow Bill Parcells. I felt like,
Yeah, this'll be good., .111 win them over.
My instincts-to a fault—are always to go
to the high-pressure
opportunity. I didn't really
assess the situation dearly
enough, I've learned to really
weigh things and not be so
driven by my gut. Sometimes it gets us in
trouble, that feeling that you can handle
anything. You have to dig deeply and not iust
be emotionally driven into a situation. Great
competitors sometimes fail prey to their
own drive to see what they can endure.
52 I BusinessWeek I July 10, 2006
team decided to replace a popular but hardly healthy mix of
Doritos chips called Munchie Mix. "It's the ultimate junk
food," says Brinker.
The junk food fans revolted. "The tribe had spoken, and
these guys wanted Munchie Mix," Brinker says. "People wrote
really spirited letters, saying: This is the only reason I flew JetBlue!'" Brinker realized he would have to reverse course, but he
didn't want his team to think change wasn't encouraged.
So he decided to make fun of himself to keep the reaction
lighthearted. On the company's intranet, Brinker started up a
"Save the Munchie Mix" campaign that read: "Some pinhead
in marketing decided to get rid of the Munchie Mix!" He invited employees to write in poems and stories about why the
snack should return to JetBlue. The point? By keeping things
fun, he hoped employees wouldn't hesitate to make their own
creative decisions. "If we don't have people willing to risk
something, then we'll really end up like our competitors." And
that, of course, would be a failure indeed. •
-With William C. Synionds in Boston, Dean Foust in Atlanta,
and Diane Brady and Moira Herbst in New York
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