Operational innovation is notoriously difficult. The power to create and implement new ways of executing core business processes is indisputable; it has been the springboard to success for leading companies in virtually every industry. But many companies have failed in their efforts to make operational innovation work. What is the secret to success? The experiences of Schneider National, a transportation and logistics company based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, provide an object lesson in how to get operational innovation right. Founded in 1935, this privately held company has a long history of growth; by the late 1990s it had become the largest full-truck trucking company in the country, serving customers such as Lowe's, Wal-Mart and Georgia-Pacific. The company had nearly $3 billion in annual revenue and more than 20,000 employees, and its orange tractors and trailers were a fixture on U.S. highways. But in 2000, Schneider's growth slowed to a snail's pace, productivity declined, and return on capital declined. The company's managers had the intuition to realize that more of the same thing wasn't going to get them out of the hole they were in: in fact, more of the same thing was what got them into that situation . They determined that in a highly competitive industry like theirs, which suffered from massive overcapacity, serving customers better than the competition was the key to success. Ambitious goals for customer satisfaction were set and a project was initiated to address and improve one aspect of the company's interactions with customers, namely the way it prepared and provided responses to Requests for Proposals (RFPs) of customers. A team of highly capable people was convened to create a new way to develop these proposals. They had many great ideas and there was considerable enthusiasm for the opportunity. Yet the net result of this effort was absolutely zero: no changes were made and life continued as before. This is the bad news. The good news is that Schneider's leaders did not give up, but resumed their efforts in a different way. This time the venture was surprisingly successful. The time to respond to a client's RFP, which used to be 30 to 45 days, dropped to 1-2 days. These results began to appear within nine months of project initiation and were fully realized in less than two years. By getting back to customers much faster than its competitors, Schneider has managed to define the terms of competition.