Mars Inc gets the purpose v profit balance right
Showy corporations should learn from the low-key, family-owned mammal-feeder
The spiritual home of Mars Inc is Slough, an unprepossessing town somewhere under the flight path to London’s Heathrow Airport. It is not a place that sweet dreams are made of. It serves as the British backdrop for Ricky Gervais’s “The Office”. It is also the place where Forrest Mars, in the Depression of the 1930s, came up with two business ideas and a management philosophy that are still quietly shaping the world today.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Mars unwrapped”
From the July 2nd 2022 edition
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