From Tide Pods to Coach bags, how Fortune 500 companies use museums of their hits and misses to drive success

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From Tide Pods to Coach bags, how Fortune 500 companies use museums of their hits and misses to drive success

By Phil Wahba | Fortune Magazine | July-August 2024 Issue

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It took five decades of failure to turn Tide Pods into an overnight success.  Today, the Tide Pods’ failed forebears have a place of honor in the “Wall of Failures” exhibit at P&G’s Heritage Center and Archives in Cincinnati—an internal museum at headquarters aimed at helping P&G’s product-development teams find the next big thing.   Over the years, the company has kept meticulous records of its misfires, seeing them as a valuable resource. “Failure cases are a critical learning area,” says Shane Meeker, P&G’s historian and corporate storyteller. “If you’re not failing, you’re not innovating.”

P&G is hardly alone among big corporations in running an in-house museum. Countless others meticulously maintain storehouses of records, prototypes, board meeting minutes, discontinued gadgets, old press releases, marketing materials, and all manner of paraphernalia. In Billund, Denmark, Lego has five miles’ worth of shelves in climate-controlled facilities where it stores nearly every “brick set” it has ever produced. At the Atlanta airport, Delta Air Lines has two entire hangars that showcase ephemera ranging from old propeller-driven planes to bar carts from aviation’s glamorous age.

Many companies go a step further, employing trained historians and organizing their archives into exhibits that tell stories and impart important lessons. These collections open stunning windows into the business world’s history. But for the companies, they transcend nostalgia and marketing: They serve a practical purpose, guiding product development, C-suite decision-making, and culture-building. 

The unifying principle among these disparate collections is that in an economy full of young disrupter companies, older brands have a huge intangible asset in their rich and long histories—resources that can help them build and fine-tune products for the future.

Museums and archives also help companies, particularly those of a certain age, foster a feeling of belonging to an entity with a history and a greater purpose, without the “here today, gone tomorrow” vibe that characterizes tech unicorns. That sense of purpose is especially important among new hires.  At some companies, C-suite leaders are avid users of these resources. 

Above all, well-stocked archives can help companies avoid the trap of short-termism. “It suggests a value orientation in the company toward thinking bigger,” says Caitlin Rosenthal, a history professor at the University of California at Berkeley. There’s nothing like a museum to remind leaders that their choices, and their consequences, could endure long after they’ve moved on.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. It took five decades of failure to turn Tide Pods into an overnight success.  Today, the Tide Pods’ failed forebears have a place of honor in the “Wall of Failures” exhibit at P&G’s Heritage Center and Archives in Cincinnati—an internal museum at headquarters aimed at helping P&G’s product-development teams find the next big thing.   P&G is hardly alone among big corporations in running an in-house museum. 
2. The unifying principle among these disparate collections is that in an economy full of young disrupter companies, older brands have a huge intangible asset in their rich and long histories—resources that can help them build and fine-tune products for the future.
3. Museums and archives also help companies, particularly those of a certain age, foster a feeling of belonging to an entity with a history and a greater purpose, without the “here today, gone tomorrow” vibe that characterizes tech unicorns.  At some companies, C-suite leaders are avid users of these resources. Above all, well-stocked archives can help companies avoid the trap of short-termism.

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Topics:  Corporate Performance, History, Failure, Decision-making