Clayton Christensen plausibly argues that in the rare cases where an incumbent firm has been able to disrupt itself, it is almost always a firm where the founding entrepreneur is still running the firm.
(p. A1) MEMPHIS, Tenn.— Fred Smith bristles at any hint that FedEx Corp., the global delivery giant he built over four decades, could be disrupted by a player such as Amazon.com Inc.
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FedEx’s 75-year-old chairman and chief executive, the man who pioneered the business of moving packages around the world at lightning speed, is confronting some of the greatest threats to the company he founded.
Global trade is slowing and tariff (p. A9) fights have companies rethinking supply chains. A key partner, the U.S. Postal Service, is struggling. Amazon has morphed from a customer into a competitor.
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Mr. Smith, a former Marine officer and decorated Vietnam War veteran, started FedEx in 1971 and has been CEO for nearly its whole history. The billionaire was preparing to hand over the reins, but he extended his stay after two top executives, including his heir apparent, abruptly left.
That has left Mr. Smith, who remains one of FedEx’s biggest shareholders, to revamp the business. He started with divorcing Amazon.
For years, Amazon has been building up its logistics operations to handle more deliveries itself. The online retailing giant added tractor-trailers, hundreds of sorting centers and dozens of cargo planes to carry millions of its packages. It now delivers nearly half its orders, compared with less than 15% in 2017, according to estimates from research firm Rakuten Intelligence.
In February [2019], Amazon noted in its annual report that it views companies in “transportation and logistics services” among its rivals.
“They had never done that before that day,” Mr. Smith said. “So we took it seriously.”
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(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 17, 2019, and has the title “Fred Smith Created FedEx. Now He Has to Reinvent It.”)