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Did Steve Ballmer really invent the Tide detergent box?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-great-stories-about-Steve-Ballmer/answer/Caroline-Zelonka
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2 Answers
George Anders
George Anders, Interviewed a fair number of billionaire types for WSJ and Forbes
Answered Oct 8 2014 ยท Author has 919 answers and 3.8m answer views
I don't think so. Steve Ballmer was at P&G as an assistant product manager from 1977 to 1979, right after graduating from Harvard. Mostly he was in charge of Duncan-Hines's Moist & Easy cake mixes -- a relatively minor product that could be entrusted to a bright newbie without too much danger.
Tide was (and is) a big money-maker for P&G. It wouldn't have made sense for P&G to unleash its newest hires on the showcase brands. What's more, something as fundamental as redesigning the box in a big way would have involved many people.
But ... if you're trying to associate Ballmer with the wide-box gambit . . . you may have the right idea paired with the wrong product. Here's a quite detailed 1997 Forbes profile of Ballmer that credits him with pushing for wider Duncan-Hines boxes. Same basic idea: Take up more shelf space; leave less room for the competitor's wares. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/199...
Odds are that the wide-box ploy was already well-known at P&G at the time, and was being applied to various products. So I'd bet that Ballmer helped implement a known strategy on one more product, rather than coming up with an idea that had never been tried at P&G before. That's usually how assistant product manager jobs work.
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