Change is hard, but doing nothing is harder.
When Soon Yu, global vice president of innovation at VF Corp., joined the multi-brand conglomerate in 2010, he was tasked with changing the minds and behaviors of 60,000 people across 30-plus brands in 16 offices around the world.
An overwhelming mission for anyone, but particularly so for someone who had watched five of his own businesses dissolve and 30 products fail in his lifetime.
“One of the reasons I was hired at VF, out of 30 candidates, was because I had the best resume for failure,” Yu joked during a talk titled “Motivating and Inspiring a Winning Innovation Culture” at Product Innovation Apparel in New York on Monday.
But he also wasn’t afraid to stand up and champion change, which is what VF—owner of The North Face, Timberland and Vans, to name a few—required in an organization of its size.
Read more at Sourcing Journal.
