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?

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