Creative Execution: What Great Leaders Do to Unleash Bold Thinking and Innovation

Reversal at Midway

Within three months of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had established the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere that, in their war-plan estimates, should have taken twice as long to complete. The sphere included the Philippines, the Malaya Peninsula—including Singapore and its priceless harbor—and the Dutch East Indies. Suddenly Japan had access to the natural and energy resources that it had been denied since its occupation of Manchuria. This period of Japanese expansion was only tempered by the sinking of the small carrier Shoho at the Battle of the Coral Sea—the first battle in which the Japanese and American fleets fought each other exclusively from the air. In exchange for the Shoho and slight damages to the large carriers ...