Years later, Tom Watson, its headman, admitted he had bet his company on this initiative.
The company started the initiative to encourage more cross-departmental contact between creatives and account executives, who don't normally sit near each other and interact much.
This commissioned piece was entitled "Time in Motion, " and has already traveled to Singapore, Macau and London and will hit Moscow and perhaps Tokyo later this year in support of the company's latest initiative.
Part of whatever it's saving via job cuts may now get pumped into the company's new "Zero Carbon Initiative" to not only become the greenest technology company in the world, but reduce its global carbon emissions by 15% by 2012.
On a hot summer day last July, the company launched its Honest Cities initiative.
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Through the Ethical Trading Initiative, the company will continue to work to improve working conditions, as it has been for several years.
The company also has private finance initiative contracts with schools, including the building of a new Barnhill Community School in west London.
Similarly, the top executives at Polaroid let what was familiar overshadow a valuable new asset, killing the digital photography initiative and the company.
Another key to Wal-Mart's growth, according to Husson, is the completion of a store-remodeling initiative that the company hopes will improve the customer shopping experience.
"The C-suite label gives it more stature, certainly, but the real message is that this is a critical initiative to the company, " says Mr. Dexter.
The company announced the patent tracker initiative in February, promising that it would be ready by April 1st but managed to get it launched early.
In Australia, where he was overseeing a Better Place initiative, the company provides GM customers with a fixed-charging network and home chargers for the plug-in electric-hybrid Volt.
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The EID is not a municipal power company, but a private initiative under a public rubric that allows private property owners to provide electric and thermal energy for one or more buildings.
Even the company's well-meaning initiative to save the world from coal-fired power plants got tossed.
The company also launched its first major initiative to build additional control plane technology into its network infrastructure.
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Spearheading the turnaround was a major cost-cutting initiative, as the company closed underperforming stores and laid off 280 workers.
It is even conceivable that some Big Auto company might step up to an initiative like Google Fiber Redux or the Big Venture Play.
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Brad Pelo is suddenly in charge of a major Nintendo initiative for the Japanese company's next big console, the Wii U, despite not being an employee at Nintendo.
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Facebook's messaging initiative comes as the company seeks to bolster the impression that it is poised for significant financial growth, thanks to enduring interest from both advertisers and existing users.
Outdoor-clothing company Patagonia's new Common Threads Initiative works with customers to repair, re-use, re-sell and recycle used Patagonia products.
On Tuesday, The Walt Disney Company launched Heroes Work Here, an initiative to hire, train, and support returning veterans and their families.
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Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said the company knows its map service is a major initiative and designed it so that it would get better as more people use it.
What other company could possibly get away with such a risky initiative?
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An initiative by then Turner Broadcasting (parent company of CNN) employee, Edward Boateng, (now Managing Director of Global Media Alliance and senior advisor to Turner Broadcasting System), the CNN African Journalist of the Year was launched in 1995 to primarily encourage, promote and recognise excellence in African journalism.
And in a startup or a Fortune 500 company, continuing to spend time and energy on an initiative requires a return on that investment.
The company is a founding member of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), the recording industry's effort to develop an open, secure access system for digital music.
But Paul Davis, the then-CEO and the now-getting-to-retire-March 31st executive, convinced the Board of Directors that the company would be worth a lot more with the Rubi initiative among others.
The initiative brings together a tactical team of startup company experts and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services experts and tasks them with a 90-day mission to streamline existing visa pathways for immigrant entrepreneurs who create jobs in America.
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Today, leaders need people who, on their own initiative, will hop onto Facebook and defend their company publicly.
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