Core Ideology in the Visionary Companies

Top Companies Vission, Mission & Core values bring them on top:
1. 3AM 74
- Innovation; “Thou shall not kill a new product idea”.
- Absolute integrity.
- Respect for individual initiative and personal growth.
- Tolerance for honest mistakes.
- Product quality and reliability.
- “Our real business is solving problems”.
Year Founded: 1992Founder:
Five Minnesota investors two railroad operators, a physician, a meat-market operator, and an attorney.
Location: Cystal Bay, MN
Founding concept: To open and operate a mine to extract corundum as an abrasive to export to grinding-wheel manufacturers.
Initial Results: Mining business failed after selling only one ton of material; no further purchasers could be found. Company stumbled along via personal accounts for the investors and saved by a new investors (Louis Ordway), who helped the company shift to sandpaper production in 1905. 3M could not afford to pay its president (Edgar Ober) a salary during his first eleven years.

2. American Express 75
- Heroic customer service.
- Worldwide reliability of services.
- Encouragement of individual initiative.
Year Founded: 1850Founder: Henry wells (age unknown), William Fargo (age unknown), John butter field (age unknown).
Location: New York, NY
Founding Concept: To eliminate “wasteful competition” between three rival companies (Wells & Company; Livingston, Fargo & Company; and Butterfield, Wasson & Company) in the freight express business, the three companies express to join forces into one somewhat monopolistic, company.
Initial Results: Immediately profitable and rapidly growing (not surprising with a near monopoly).

3. Boeing 76
- Being on the leading edge of aeronautics, being pioneers.
- Tackling huge challenges and risks.
- Product safety and quality.
- Integrity and ethical business. -
To “eat, breathe, and sleep the world of aeronautics”.
Year Founded: 1915Founder: William E. Boeing (age 35)
Location: Seattle, WA
Founding Concept: From the articles of incorporation: “To be a general manufacturing business……..to manufacture goods, wares, and general merchandise of every kind, especially airplanes and vehicles of aviation…to operate a flying school and act as a common carrier of passengers and freight by aerial navigation.” Bill Boeing entered the business as an ex-lumber merchant.
Initial Results: Bill Boeing’s first airplane (the B&W) failed its Navy tests, Boeing then sold fifty of its second plane (the model C) to the Navy, but could not extend the contract and the company spiraled downward through 1919-1920. Boeing lost $300,000 in 1920 and kept itself alive through loans from Bill Boeing and making furniture and speedboats.

4. Citycorp 77
- Expansion – of size, of services offered, of geographic presence.
- Being out front – such as biggest, best, most innovative, most profitable. - Autonomy & entrepreneurship (via decentralization).
- Meritocracy.
- Aggressiveness and self-confidence.
Year Founded: 1812Founder: Samuel Osgood Location: New York
Founding Concept: Essentially a private credit union for its merchant-owners, who used it to finance their own venture.
Initial Results: No coherent strategy and continued to operate like a private bank for nearly seventy years. Didn’t begin process of becoming a national bank until the 1890s under the guidance of James Stillman.

5. Ford 78
- People as the source of our strength.
- Products as the “end result of our efforts” (we are about cars).
- Profits as a necessary means and measures for our success.
- Basic honesty and integrity(Note: This is the order from 1980s Ford MVGP document. At different points in ford’s history, the order has varied). Year Founded: 1903
Founder: Henry Ford & Alex Malcomson
Location: Detroit, MI
Founding Concept: To make automobiles based on Henry Ford’s mechanical expertise and in, particular to capitalize on vertical piston technology. One of 502 firms founded in the United States between 1900 and 1908 to make automobiles.
Initial Results: First car, model A, proved successful; reached sales of over six hundred units per month by the end of the first year of operations. Introduced five models (A, B, C, F & K) before introducing the model T in 1908, which revolutionized the industry and made Ford the number one car maker.

6. General Electric
- Improving the quality of life through technology and innovation.
- Interdependent balance between responsibility to customers, employees, society, and shareholder (no clear hierarchy).
- Individual responsibility and opportunity.
- Honesty and integrity.
Year Founded: 1892Founder: Thomas Edison, Ethu Thomson, Charles Coffin
Location: New York
Founding Concept: Consolidation of Edison General Electric Company (founded in 1878 to develop and commercialize Edison’s electricity and lighting research) and Thomson Houston Electric Company (founded in 1883) as a conglomerate of electricity-related business.
Initial Results: Successful first year ($3 million earning in seven months); financial difficulties and cash shortage in 1893 due to national depression; recovered and grew steadily through the next two decades aided, in part, by evolving to the AC system.

7. Hewlett-Packard (HP) 80
- Technical contribution to fields in which we participate (“we exist as a corporation to make a contribution”).
- Respect and opportunity for HP people, including the opportunity to share in the success of the enterprise.
- Contribution and responsibility to the communities in which we operate. - Affordable quality for HP customers.
- Profit and growth as a means to make all of the other values and objectives possible.
Year Founded: 1937Founder: William Hewlett & David PackardLocation: Palo Alto, CA
Founding Concept: Initial approach was “strictly opportunistic” within the broadly defined “radio, electronic and electrical engineering field.” Initial product considered in early years included welding equipment, shock machines for weight reduction, automatic urinal flushers, bowling alley sensors, radio transmitters, public address systems, air-conditioning equipment, clock driver for telescopes, medical equipment and oscilloscopes.
Initial Results: Kept itself alive in the first year via contract engineering jobs and lean operations (in a garage). In 1939, sold a few audio oscilloscopes. First year sales: just above $5100 with a profit of $1300. Moved out of garage in 1940. Seventeen people employed in 1941. World war second boosted employment to 144 people; shrank twenty percent after the war. Sales in 1948 $2.1 million.

8. IBM 81
- Give full consideration to the individual employee.
- Spend a lost of time making customers happy.
- Go the last time making to do things right; seek superiority in all we undertake.
Year Founded: 1911
Founder: Charles Flint Location: New York
Founding Concept: Merger of two small companies into a mini-conglomerate of measuring scales, time clocks, and tabulating machines for clerks and accountants (named the “Computing Tabulating, Recording Company,” or CTR).
Initial Results:Floundered for three years and the board seriously discussed liquidation. In 1914, hired Thomas J Watson, Sr. who gradually improved the health of the company and turned it into the marker leader in tabulating machines by 1930.

9. Johnson & Johnson 82
- The company exists “to alleviate pain and disease”.
- We have a hierarchy of responsibilities: customer’s first, employee second, society at large third and shareholders fourth” (see the credo reproduced elsewhere in this book).
- Individual opportunity and reward based on merit.
- Decentralization = Creativity = Productivity
Year Founded: 1886
Founder: Robert W. Johnson, James Johnson, E Mead Johnson.
Location: New Brunswick
Founding Concept: Manufacturing of medical products, with particular emphasis on antiseptic surgical dressing and medical plasters; first catalog had thirty-two pages “Crammed with an array of products”.
Initial Results: The company began with fourteen employees in 1886, in 1888 the company employed 125 workers; in 1894, the company employed 400. Early success based on a wide range of innovative products, emerging of hospitals and cultivation of a strong band image.

10. Marriott 83
- Friendly service & excellent value (customers are guests); “make people away from home feel that they’re among friends and really wanted”.
- People are number 1 – treat them well, expect a lot and the rest will follow.
- Work hard, yet keep it fun.
- Continual self-improvement.
- Overcoming adversity to build character.
Year Founded: 1927Founder: J. Willard Marriott
Location: Washington, DC
Founding Concept: To be in business for themselves. Began with a nine-seat A&W root beer stand. To attract additional business, they added hot food (mostly Mexican) and named the restaurant the Hot Shoppe.
Initial Results: Built on sixteen-hour days, the store proved profitable during the first year, with $16000 gross receipts. By 1929, has expanded to three outlets running twenty-four hours per day. Expanded to Baltimore in 1931. Had eighteen Hot Shoppe by 1940.

11. Merck 84
- “We are in the business of preserving and improving human life. All of our actions must be measured by our success in achieving this goal”.
- Honesty and integrity.
- Corporate social responsibility.
- Science-based innovation, not imitation.
- Unequivocal excellent in all aspects of the company.
- Profit, but profit from works that benefits humanity.
Year Founded: 1891Founder: George Merck
Location: New York City, NY
Founding Concept: Sales branch for German chemical company, E. Merck Traces roots back to Merck family apothecary in Darmstadt, Germany, 1668.
Initial Results: Solid sales success ($1 million by 1897) of imported chemicals from parent company; didn’t manufacture its own chemicals until its second decade of life. Began manufacturing iodides and other staple pharmaceuticals at new facility I Rahway, New Jersey, in about 1903. Revenue in 1910 $3 million.

12. Motorola 85
- The company exists “to honorably serve the community by providing products and services of superior quality at a fair price”.
- Continuous self-renewal.
- Tapping the “latent creative power within us”.
- Continual improvement in all that the company does in ideas, in quality, in customer satisfaction.
- Treat each employee with dignity, as an individual.
- Honesty, integrity, and ethics in all aspects of business.
Year Founded: 1928Founder: Paul V. Galvin
Location: Chicago, IL
Founding Concept: Battery eliminators for radios, including a repair business for sears, Roebuck radio battery eliminators that can back to sears for service under warranty. Galvin “knew that the eliminator was not going to provide a market for very long,” so he began looking early for other markets.
Initial Results: The company kept itself barely alive in the firs year on the eliminator manufacture and repair business. Almost bankrupt at the end of 1929. Conceived of car radio concept in 1930. Lost money in 1931 and grew steadily form then on.

13. Nordstrom 86
- Service to the customer above all else.
- Hard work and productivity.
- Continuous improvement, never being satisfied.
- Excellence in reputation, being part of something special.
Year Founded: 1901
Founder: John Nordstrom, Carl Wallin
Location: Seattle, WA
Founding Concept: In the words of john Nordstrom: “I was still not certain what I wanted to do…..I started looking around for some small business to get into. Mr. Wallin was a shoemaker by trade and ……..had set up a shoe repair shop……I often visited Mister Wallin in his shop and one day he suggested that we join a partnership and open a shoe store.”
Initial Results: Became profitable early, changed location three times in the first fifteen years, but remained a single-unit business unit 1923, when the partner added a second store.

14. Philip Morris 87
- The right to personal freedom of choice (to smoke, to buy whatever one wants) is worth defending.
- Winning – being the best and beating others.
- Encouraging individual initiative.
- Opportunity to achieve based on merit, not gender, race, or class.
- Hard work and continuous self-improvement.
Year Founded: 1847
Founder: Philip Morris
Location: London, England
Founding Concept: Tobacco shop on Bond Street in London.
Initial Results: Remained a simple retail shop until 1854, when Philip Morris began making cigarettes. Little indication of substantial early growth. Introduced its cigarette in the United States in 1902. American investors purchased rights to the Philip Morris name in 1919.

15. Procter & Gamble (P&G) 88
- Product excellence
- Continuous self-improvement.
- Honesty & fairness.
- Respect and concern for the individual.
Year Founded: 1837
Founder: William Procter and James Gamble
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Founding Concept: Procter, a candle maker and Gamble a soap maker, relied on the same animal fat raw materials to make their products, as brother-in-law, they decided to pool their efforts and formed a partnership to sell soap and candle.
Initial Results: The Company grew slowly, requiring fifteen years before outgrowing their modest office, production facility, and store on “Main Street, 2nd door off Sixth Street”. Although not spectacular in growth, the company appears to have been profitable, in 1847, the company earned $20,000. Two decades after founding, the company employed eighty factory workers.

16. Sony 89
- To experience the sheer joy that comes form the advancement, application, and innovation of technology that benefits the general public.
- To elevate the Japanese culture and national status.
- Being a pioneer – not following others, but doing the impossible.
- Respecting and encouraging each individual’s ability and creativity.
Year Founded: 1945
Founder: Masaru IbukaLocation: Tokyo, Japan
Founding Concept: No clear idea other than the vague concept to apply technology to the creation of consumer products.
Initial Results: Struggled with a failed rice cooker, failed tape recorder system; stayed alive via crude heating pads and then a hodgepodge of products on contract for Japan Broadcasting, such as voltmeters and control consoles for studios. Developed first hit consumer product (pocket radio) in 1955. Took a dozen years to reach five hundred employees.

17. Wal-Mart 90
- “We exist to provide value to our customers” – to make their lives better via lower price and greater selection, all else is secondary.
- Swim upstream, buck conventional wisdom.
- Be in partnership with employees.
- Work with passion, commitments, and enthusiasm.
- Run lean.
- Pursue ever-higher goals.
Year Founded: 1945
Founder: Sam Walton
Location: Newport, AR
Founding Concept: Acquired a franchise license for a single-unit Ben Franklin five-and-dime store in a small town; no evidence of plans to be anything than a single-unit outlet.
Initial Results: First year sales: $80000; third year sales $225,000. Lost his lease in 1950, and thereby lost his store. Moved to Bentoville, Arkansas, and opened a small five and dime store he called “Walton’s” Expanded to two units in 1952.

18. Walt Disney 91
- No cynicism allowed.
- Fanatical attention to consistency and detail.
- Continuous progress via creativity, dreams, and imagination.
- Fanatical control and preservation of Disney’s “magic” image.
- “To being happiness to millions” and to celebrate, nurture, and promulgate “wholesome American values”.
Year Founded: 1923Founder: Walter E. Disney, Roy O. Disney
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Founding Concept: Walt moved from Kansa City to Los Angeles to get into the movie business, but could not land a job, so he ranted a camera, made an animation stand, set up a studio in his uncle’s garage, and decided to go into the animation business for himself. According to Disney biographer Schickel, “He was at least halfway convinced that he was too late, by perhaps six years, to break into animation, but (it) was the only area in which he had any prior experience.”
Initial Results: First film series (Alice) provided barely enough cash flow (due to frugal expenses) to keep going. Second product (Oswald the Rabbit, 1927) did better, but lost control of product in bad business arrangement. In 1928 he introduced Micky Mouse.