Starbucks is all about the future.”

Starbucks is all about the future.”296 To return to Schultz’s question in 2003, how would Starbucks get big and stay small? What would the Starbucks of the future look like?
Getting Fit for the Future
From the time Schultz returned as CEO, he realized that he and his team would need to dig deeply into all facets of Starbucks operations in order to transform it into an enduring, scalable, and profitable company that played to win in the marketplace while remaining committed to its mission and values. Plans included innovations in customer and partner engagement, thoughtful international expansion, and new product development.
Digital Revolution
Schultz had long recognized that Starbucks lagged behind its peers in the digital space. When he returned in January 2008, the company had only a basic informational website, and virtually no company-directed presence on social media. Starbucks needed to get in the game, and quickly.
Schultz had shared these concerns with Michael Dell several weeks earlier when they were both vacationing in Hawaii. Dell introduced him to his company’s interactive website, IdeaStorm.com, where PC users were invited to post suggestions regarding existing products and services, as well as ideas about what they wanted to see next.297 Schultz liked the interactive nature of the site.298 “I’ve always believed that innovation is about rethinking the nature of relationships, not just rethinking products,” he wrote in Onward. And in the concept of an interactive forum, Schultz could see “there was definitely something there for Starbucks.”299
Dell introduced Schultz to Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, who was also on holiday in Hawaii. Benioff had helped Dell develop IdeaStorm.com, and over breakfast on Christmas Eve, he and Schultz sketched out the basics of an interactive site for Starbucks. Schultz immediately called interim chief technology officer Chris Bruzzo in Seattle to put him on alert. A few days after Christmas, Bruzzo was at work with Benioff, his colleagues at Salesforce and the Starbucks digital team to develop My Starbucks Idea.300
As the site took shape, “an overarching notion became clear,” Schultz recalled in Onward. “More important than customers’ ideas would be the discussions that followed.”301 He continued:
Each idea was a door, an opening line for conversations on topics our customers cared about, like recycling or low-fat food. By using suggestions as opportunities to learn from and inform our customers, the new website would be more than a one-way suggestion box; instead, it would be a genuine opportunity to connect.302
Within minutes of the launch at the March 2008 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, ideas appeared on the My Starbucks Idea site. “Give customers free coffee on their birthdays,” read one idea. “Free Wi-Fi for all,” read another.303 Starbucks drove traffic to the site via a link on the company’s home page; the company also placed cards on store counters reading, “Have an idea for us?” Within 24 hours of the site’s launch, users posted 7,000 ideas.304 During the first week, 100,000 customers voted on suggestions on issues as varied as in-store music, breakfast options and recycling tips.305 Within two months, a total of 41,000 ideas had streamed in. “Dell had gotten 12,000 ideas over the course of the year on IdeaStorm,” Bruzzo recalled. “We surpassed that after two weeks. We knew that we were touching on something that was right for the brand.”306 As users joined conversations around