DuPont Headquarters, Wilmington, Delaware

    The DuPont company got its start when Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours fled France's revolution to come to America, where, in 1802, he built a mill on the Brandywine River in Wilmington, Delaware, to produce blasting powder used in guns and artillery. In 1902, E. I. du Pont's great-grandson, Pierre S. du Pont, along with two cousins, bought out other family members and began transforming DuPont into the world's leading chemical company.You became DuPont's CEO right as "the world fell apart" at the height of the global financial crisis. Fortunately, you had early warning from sharply declining sales in DuPont's titanium dioxide division, which makes white pigment used in paints, sunscreen, and food coloring. Sales trends there can be counted on to indicate what will happen next in the general economy, so you and your leadership team began working with the heads of all of DuPont's divisions to make contingency plans in case sales dropped by 5 percent, 10 percent, 20 percent, or more. Many DuPont managers thought you were crazy, until the downturn hit. It was difficult, but with plans to cut 6,500 employees at the ready, you were prepared when sales dropped by 20 percent at the end of the year. But when that wasn't enough, salaried and professional employees were asked to voluntarily take unpaid time off and an additional 2,000 jobs were eliminated. In all, these moves reduced expenses by a billion dollars a year. But one place you refused to cut was DuPont's research budget, which remained at $1.4 billion per year. One of the ways in which the board of directors measures company performance is by comparing DuPont's total stock returns to the returns of 19 peer companies. Over the last quarter cen-tury, DuPont has regularly ended up in the bottom third of the list. This makes clear that you have one overriding goal: to restore DuPont's prestige, performance, and competitiveness. The question, of course, is how? Before deciding how to restore DuPont's edge, there are some big questions to consider. First, given sustained weak performance over the last quarter century, do you need to step back and consider DuPont's purpose, that is, the reason that you're in business? After transitioning from blasting powder to chemicals, DuPont's slogan became, "Better things for better living ... through chemistry." Is it time, again, to reconsider what DuPont is all about? Or, instead of an intense focus on DuPont's purpose, would it make more sense to keep options open by making small, simultaneous investments in many alternative plans? Then, when one or a few of these plans emerge as likely winners, you invest even more in these plans while discontinuing or reducing investment in the others. What kinds of goals should you set for the company? Should you focus on finances, product development, or people? And should you have an overriding goal, or should you have separate goals for different parts of the company?