How to build your company to last, w/Fiat's John Elkann
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2018
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
Forget being a unicorn. Learn to be a phoenix. Your company can last 100+ years — but you'll need the resilience to rise and fall, and rise again. Fiat’s chair John Elkann shares the principles that helped the "horseless carriage" company founded by his great-grandfather survive the ups and downs of a century of business — including competitor attacks, leader shakeups, financial crises and more. One key: Resilience. Another: Deciding which company traditions to keep, and which to leave in the past. Featuring cameos from Radio Flyer's Robert Pasin, Cue Ball Ventures' Tony Tjan and ABC Home & Kitchen's Paulette Cole.
Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/john-elkann-how-to-build-your-company-to-last/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.8 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player |
| 0:28.0 | and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:34.0 | One of the first things he made was a little wagon that he used to haul tools around in the workshop. |
| 0:44.0 | That's Robert Passen, the CEO radio flyer. |
| 0:49.0 | He's talking about his grandfather, Antonio Passen, |
| 0:52.0 | who came from a long line of Italian cabinet makers. |
| 0:55.2 | He started making little red wagons for his workshop in Chicago, mostly just to cart around |
| 1:00.4 | tools, but then he noticed those wagons were selling better than any of |
| 1:04.4 | his other products. Like any good entrepreneur, he pivoted. Pretty soon he was |
| 1:09.8 | out of the furniture business and in the wagon business. |
| 1:13.0 | Come and get your wagons. |
| 1:15.0 | America's finest coaster wagon for every boy and every girl. |
| 1:20.0 | And that was really the birth of the iconic little red wagon. |
| 1:26.0 | From these metal stamped wagons, Antonia grew a family business that remains a heavyweight |
| 1:32.2 | and toys a full century later. |
| 1:37.2 | We had a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary. |
| 1:40.4 | The Capstone event was a big event that we had here in Chicago. |
| 1:44.0 | We brought the world's largest wagon down to Michigan Avenue for a birthday celebration. |
... |
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