The Black Box
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announcing the new product line to the world. While they had always been a private company, he and his finance team decided that if this new product line went well, they might be able to go public and he could leave his legacy to the world. The PR team was instructed to begin sending out news releases about the new technology, new product line, and pending campaign. Getting the business publications talking about Emerson Jones would be critical to the company’s opportunity to go public. They interviewed the R&D department to understand more about the technology and the marketing team about the pending campaign to launch the product. They quickly went to work preparing news releases, updating the company web site, and pitching the story to the major business publications. They were hugely successful. The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, even Fast Company wanted to do a story on this social mission that was guiding the changes in the company. The PR department had done an excellent job of driving interest in the story. But without involvement as a team with other departments, a few problems could develop. • By announcing the green color of the insulation in the news release, they alerted competitors to the idea before it hit the market. Quickly confirming that no trademark had been filed, other companies moved to implement the green color in their own manufacturing to indicate that they were also environmentally friendly. • In a quote provided by one of the R&D professionals, the aspect of the process that was unique and could have been protected by trade secret law was publicly announced, thereby eliminating any ability to ever protect it as a trade secret. • The unions that managed the workers in the plant were unaware that plans were in development to repurpose the plant for a new function. Although Emerson Jones had no intention of changing its workforce, the union was outraged that they had not been consulted about this change in thinking. The company now faced significant problems with its labor force. • Wall Street also reacted. While there had been rumors for some time that the bottling company might go public, the sudden social mission of the company caused concerns, and