Flameout: The Rise and Fall of Burger Chef - Softcover

McDonald, John P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1456418637 ISBN 13: 9781456418632

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011

Synopsis

Why do some of the world's most innovative companies lose the very qualities that made them successful?

For a brief moment in American history, Burger Chef stood shoulder to shoulder with McDonald's. By the early 1970s, it had grown to more than 1,000 restaurants, pioneered many of the innovations that define the modern fast-food industry, and appeared destined to become one of the world's dominant restaurant brands.

Then it disappeared.

In this newly expanded Third Edition, entrepreneur and innovation leader John P. McDonald tells the remarkable story of the company that changed an industry, and the entrepreneurial family that built it. Drawing on years of original research, interviews with founders and executives, corporate archives, and previously unpublished photographs, Flameout traces Burger Chef's extraordinary rise from a small Indianapolis restaurant equipment company to America's second-largest hamburger chain.

But this is more than the history of a forgotten restaurant.

It is a case study in innovation, entrepreneurship, organizational growth, and the difficult transition from founder-led creativity to corporate management. Along the way, readers will discover timeless lessons about building innovative cultures, scaling organizations, leading through change, and avoiding the hidden forces that can quietly extinguish entrepreneurial thinking.

Whether you are an entrepreneur, business leader, student of innovation, or simply fascinated by one of America's greatest untold business stories, Flameout offers a compelling reminder that success is never a destination. It must be continually reinvented.

Because in the end, the companies that endure are the ones that never stop asking a simple question:

"What if there's a better way?"

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1456418637
• ISBN 13: 9781456418632
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192