2010 Edison Achievement Award Winner A.G. Lafley

A.G. Lafley, who served as P&G’s CEO from 2000 to 2009, is Chairman of the Company’s Board of Directors. Lafley led the transformation of P&G during the nine years he served as CEO. He focused the Company on core businesses and brands, faster-growing and higher-margin beauty, grooming and health care businesses, and winning in developing markets. He made P&G a more consumer-driven and externally focused company. And, he helped shape a more diverse, open and collaborative culture in which innovation is the primary driver of business and financial growth.

Under Lafley’s leadership, P&G more than doubled sales. The Company’s portfolio of billion-dollar brands – brands that each generate $1 billion or more in annual sales – has grown from 10 to 22 since Lafley became CEO. On average, annual organic sales grew 5%, core earnings-per-share grew 12%, and free cash flow productivity increased 111% since 2001. The Company’s market capitalization increased dramatically with Lafley as CEO, making P&G one of the five most valuable companies in the U.S. and among the 10 most valuable companies in the world at the end of Lafley’s tenure as chief executive.

Ironically, A.G. never intended to pursue a career in business. He grew up in Keene, New Hampshire, and graduated from Hamilton College with a plan to become a teacher and basketball coach. He took a break to study history, politics, art, cinema and drama in Paris, returning to the U.S. in 1969 to enter a Ph.D. program at the University of Virginia. Then, his plans changed.

He joined the U.S. Navy in 1970 where he oversaw all the retail and service operations for 10,000 Navy and Marine corps and their families in Japan. It was his first general manager job, and he was hooked.

After the Navy, A.G. graduated from Harvard Business School and joined P&G in 1977. Over the next 15 years, he moved up through the Company’s laundry and cleaning businesses, delivering record results and leading organizations responsible for some of P&G’s biggest innovations, including Liquid Tide and Tide with Bleach, that continue to fuel P&G’s growth yet today.

He went back to Japan in 1994, with responsibility for all of P&G’s operations in Asia. He laid the foundation for a return to growth in Japan and helped build P&G’s business in China from less than $90 million to nearly $1 billion in sales by the time he left Asia. In 1999, he ran P&G’s fast-growing Beauty business, along with the Company’s business in North America—its largest single market.

Lafley has been recognized as one of the past decade’s most effective CEOs, earning distinction as CEO of the Year from Chief Executive magazine, the prestigious Academy of Management, and the Peter F. Drucker Leader to Leader Institute.

These awards are sponsored by the Thomas Edison Papers at Rutgers University, a globally recognized research network dedicated to the study of innovation and its application in the 21st century.