Real Case Stories

M&M's are part of the main operational food ration for the US Armed Forces. The candies have been part of NASA's every space shuttle mission since Columbia 1981 and are also on the International Space Station menu. Do you know why? Because the candy "melts in your mouth--not in your hand!"  In 1932, confectioner Forrest Mars Sr. moved to England and began manufacturing the Mars bar for troops in the United Kingdom. He  was looking to solve a key consumer problem of the time before air-conditioning: chocolate bars melted in the heat, so Americans stopped buying them.  During the Spanish Civil War , he  saw soldiers eating the British made  Smarties , a color-varied sugar-coated   chocolate   confect ionery , as part of their rations. Mars was thrilled by the unique construct of these candies and knew it to be the perfect solution to the sales slump that hit the family business every summer.  He returned to the Un...

Founded in 1851, Corning Inc. is one of the world's biggest glassmakers today. It boasts of annual sales of nearly $10 billion and billions in annual profits. Developer and manufacturer of the now ubiquitous Gorilla Glass , Corning is another sterling example of a "superstar" firm. Corning has had a rich history of working with innovators from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs. In fact, innovation is one of the key values driving Corning's business strategy. Corning regularly invests a healthy 10 percent of its revenue in R&D ; to maintain and further it's technological leadership. And that's in good times  and  in bad. When the telecom bubble burst in 2000 and cratering fiber-optic prices sent Corning's stock from $100 to $1.50 per share by 2002, its CEO at the time reassured scientists that not only was Corning still about research but that R&D would be the path back to prosperity. Corning has continuously reinvented itself – moving fro...

Over 100 years after Theodore Roosevelt warned against the growing control of a handful of corporate giants, a small group of "superstar" companies—some old, some new—are once again dominating the global economy. As per a 2015 Mckinsey Global Institute report , 10% of the world’s public companies generate 80% of all profits. What's most intriguing is that the gap between these few “superstar” firms and the rest is growing .  But what makes these "superstars" thrive? These firms are known to invest in their core skills so as to relentlessly pursue their long-term goals. And thus it turns out, that a remarkable number of superstar companies are family owned or run by dominant owners who can resist the pressure for short-term results. The last single-arch McDonald's sign in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, modified to mention the drive-thru, dismantled in 2016 For an example, we can turn to McDonald’s. In 1948, the fast-food joint was already a succes...

In May 2014, Sierra Leone confirmed its first case of death from Ebola , a viral hemorrhagic fever killing an average of 50% of those infected. The outbreak, that claimed nearly 4000 lives, began silently and gradually built up to a burst of cases. source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention A Kenyan Doctor in protective overalls does a Usain Bolt gesture as last Ebola patient is discharged.  Credit: International Medical Corps For the next year and a half, as the world's worst known Ebola epidemic continued to spread in the area, widespread quarantines were a regular fixture. On 30th July 2014, a state of national emergency was declared. All schools were closed down indefinitely. Locked up in their homes, the largely illiterate populace of Sierra Leone turned towards the radio for news and entertainment. At the time, radio was the most preferred means for receiving information for 85% of the population .  The then  Gov...

How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It’s about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes Music Store. Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet. Through these interwoven narratives, Witt has written a thrilling book that depicts the moment in history when ordinary life became forever entwined with the world online—when, suddenly, all the music ever re...

This story talks about how an Entrepreneur started a paint shop but nobody would buy from his store. In the evenings he used to hang out with mechanics and body shop owners and over the course of time figure out that their biggest problem was wasted paint in body touch-ups. As the minimum paint can was of 500ml a lot of it would get wasted during small touch up works. He then pioneered the concept of packaging paint in small cigarette tin boxes (125ml) and thus the CT (cigarette tin) measure was born in Mangalore.

What is the effect of color on our Behavior? The Australian government hired a research agency to find out what is the world's ugliest color and they came up with Pantone 448C.  The purpose of this activity was to color cigarette products with this colour to dissuade people from smoking. Check this video below

In his book Thinking in New Boxes , author Luc speaks about a case of how BIC, manufacturers of Ball point pens, got into Lighter manufacturing and disposable razors business. BIC started as a stationery company and purveyor of popular low-cost ballpoint pens. Business was healthy, but BIC wanted to grow. Had BIC thought of itself as a “pen” company, it might have focused solely on expanding its range of pens with new colors, new sizes, and new price points. But one executive perceived a new box. BIC was not in the pen business, it was in the “inexpensive disposable plastic items” business. With this breakthrough change to a different box, the company opened its eyes to a host of new opportunities—disposable lighters, razors, and even precharged mobile phones. BIC and its sales soared. BIC launched its first disposable lighters in 1973 and its first disposable shavers in 1975 eventually becoming the global market leader in pocket lighters and number 2 position globally for ...

Stamp celebrating the history of the Reinheitsgebot. The Reinheitsgebot  (literally "purity order"), sometimes called the "German Beer Purity Law", is the collective name for a series of regulations limiting the ingredients in beer in Germany src Wiki Five hundred years ago, on April 23, 1516, two Bavarian dukes enacted the law. “In all cities and markets and in the countryside,” the Reinheitsgebot reads, “only barley, hops, and water may be used for brewing beer.” (Yeast was added to the law later, after Louis Pasteur discovered what was doing the fermenting.)  src HBR The text of the 1516 Bavarian law is as follows: We hereby proclaim and decree, by Authority of our Province, that henceforth in the Duchy of Bavaria, in the country as well as in the cities and marketplaces, the following rules apply to the sale of beer: From   Michaelmas   to   Georgi , the price for one Mass [Bavarian Liter 1,069] or one Kopf [bowl-shaped container for fluids,...

MIT's Richard Locke researched  2 Nike tshirt factories in Mexico. These two factories have many similarities - both are in Mexico, both are in the apparel industry, both produce more or less the same products for Nike (and other brands) and both are subject to the same code of conduct. Plant 1 gave workers complete freedom to decide production targets, team organization and managing production plants and schedule. Employees work in teams and are also responsible for routine maintenance of equipment. Jobs are rotated and they value knowing how to perform a variety of operations and claimed that this opportunity to work on several operations plus in teams significantly improved working conditions. Every morning, the supervisors communicate to each team the style and quantity of products they need to produce. The workers would get together and discuss amongst themselves how much they can actually produce and then meet with the supervisor and agree on the production target f...

In this research , the team found that just 3 minutes of Negative news in the morning can lead to a 27% higher likelihood of you having a bad day. The negative news in the morning can set the trend for the day. One group was exposed to Negative News and another was exposed to Negative News with a solution focus. Individuals who watched just three minutes of negative news in the morning had a whopping 27% greater likelihood of reporting their day as unhappy six to eight hours later compared to the positive condition. The article however also proposed another theory. When exposed to a Problem followed by a solution, the mood significantly changed. Participants were found to be less hostile than those only exposed to the problems. Also read Consuming Negative News can make you less Effective at Work

According to Drucker - The Idea of Short - Long range planning is very often misunderstood. They are not determined by any given Time span. A decision is not short range because it takes only a few months to implement or long range because it takes a year to do so. What matters is the time span over which it is Effective