The “Stop-Doing” Project Abandonment Strategy

In a recent interview, Campbell Soup CEO Douglas Conant defined his mission in taking the helm eight years ago as “to take a ‘bad’ company and lift its performance to ‘extraordinary’ by 2011." In 2001, Campbell was indeed without clear direction and had no innovation strategy. Conant's strategy was simple enough: developing or keeping only products that ranked first or second in three major...