Float: Pilkingtons’ Glass Revolution (review)

David J. Bricknell’s Float: Pilkingtons’ Glass Revolution is a study on entrepreneurial decision making based on a case study: the Pilkington Brothers industries. The Pilkington family took the first steps in the glass-making industry in the beginning of the nineteenth century, remaining a small British plate glass producer until the mid-twentieth century. Its leading worldwide role is associated with its pioneering mastering of float glass technology, which eliminates the traditional operations of rolling, grinding, and polishing the glass, while creating a high-quality inexpensive flat glass. In the so-called Pilkington process, the molten glass is fed into a “tin bath” and then flows onto the tin surface, forming a floating ribbon with perfectly smooth surfaces on both sides and an even thickness. This new process of glass making was a major technical revolution that affected the technique itself, the organization of work in the plants, the shape of the world’s glass industry, and the leadership in international markets.

Bricknell uses an interesting methodological dispositif, centering his analysis on the six critical entrepreneurial decisions that led float glass production from an initial experimental period to a well-consolidated phase. These six decisions are spread along a time span of about thirty-five years and cross the leadership of three chairmen of the board: Sir Harry Pilkington, Sir Alistair Pilkington, and Anthony Pilkington. The author’s own experience as a lawyer at Pilkington Brothers for twenty-four years was surely an advantage when consulting the firm’s archives and interviewing eyewitnesses in order to “recreate what was in the minds of the directors at the time they made those decisions” (p. 12). This intimacy is also responsible for the tone of personal admiration that is very clear in some of the passages of the book, as well as for the author’s interpretation of both the “silences” of the board concerning some critical topics and the role of a Christian ethics.

According to Bricknell, the Pilkington Brothers’ main characteristic when taking strategic decisions—the “Pilkington way” (p.12)—was its, and I am using a political comparison, democratic centralism, that is, once a decision was made by the board, it became the only voice of the company and all were expected to abide by it, not because they could not disagree, but because they really felt that consensus was a creative force. The decisions were molded by the culture of both the company and the glass industry, which had for a long time very specific codes of conduct, both in terms of interpersonal relationships within the firm and the relationships among competitors.

The six critical decisions that structure the chapters are (1) producing float glass, that is, moving from a new idea to the productive and commercial dimensions; (2) licensing float technology, continuing a traditional glass industry collective understanding that licensing was the best way to increase further developments and to keep a peaceful ambiance among competitors in the market; (3) investing massively in float technology, thus widening the previous strategic decisions; (4) and (5) how to retain control of the float technology in international markets; (6) consolidation of the firm’s position as the largest glassmaker in the world.

In each of the chapters, the respective leading decision is approached from the board perspective, from a technical standpoint, and from the view of the market environment, thus giving the reader an overall and dynamic view of the entrepreneurial decision-making process: what is a “good” or “bad” option, how options were negotiated within different imposing cultures, the relevance of the wider economic and financial contexts, and the outcome of the choices made by the firm.

The final chapter discusses the success of the Pilkington Brothers’ board decisions and whether or not they should and/or could have been different. The author claims that from the company’s perspective, the float process was a success, the main goals of Pilkington—technical and entrepreneurial leadership in the glass-making industry...