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HISTORIES
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is the quintessential learning organization. For well over a century, the company has cultivated a highly-disciplined, intensely analytical approach to doing business, habitually asking what works, what doesn't, and why. As Ed Artzt, P&G's former chairman and CEO, put it: "[I]f . . . we become very disciplined in the way we examine our history, learn from it, and extract lessons from it, and then convert those lessons into principles for the future, then we will make far, far fewer mistakes. And our success rate will increase dramatically."
With this in mind, P&G commissioned Winthrop to research and write a full-scale history of the company, with a focus on the evolution of P&G brands. Rising Tide: Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Building at Procter & Gamble (Harvard Business School Press) charts the turning points and defining moments in the growth of a marketing powerhouse. It explores key product innovations, like Ivory soap, and explains how P&G developed new marketing techniques to transform everyday household items into iconic brands. "[M]ore than a company history," Business Horizons described it, "it is, in fact, a lesson book of marketing milestones in consumer products during the 20th century." A best-seller in its second printing, the book is used internally to train new employees and to educate partners and customers in P&G's 165 year old culture in a thoroughly entertaining fashion.
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