DuPont's defining moves.
The defining strategic moves at DuPont — each one explained and grounded in the record.
The Adjacency Expansion · Adjacency Expansion
DuPont Keeps Promising One Last Breakup. There Is No Last Breakup.
Since 2015 DuPont has merged a $130B chemical giant and then unwound it into pieces — Chemours, Dow, Corteva, the M&M sale, the Electronics spin. Each 'New DuPont' is sold as the final, focused company. Then it announces the next split. The terminal state never arrives.
8 min
The Fall · Decision Forks
DuPont Spent a Decade Assembling and Dismantling Itself. The Pieces Never Sat Still.
DuPont spun off Chemours in 2015, merged with Dow into a $130B colossus in 2017, broke into three in 2019, and is now spinning off Qnity by November 2025 — a near-perpetual reorganization where each split solves a problem the last one created.
7 min
The Fall · Decision Forks
DuPont Didn't Collapse. It Was Taken Apart on Purpose to Unlock Value.
DuPont was 215 years old in 2017. Then it merged with Dow and split into pieces in the name of unlocking value. The autopsy reveals no market killed it — a strategy did, and the strategy was the plan from day one.
8 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Expansion
DuPont Reinvented Itself for 200 Years. Almost Never on Purpose.
DuPont went from gunpowder to nylon to a three-way breakup that ended in 2019. The legend is visionary reinvention. The record says something colder: nearly every pivot was forced by a court, a war, or an activist, not chosen by a strategist.
8 min
The Crisis Response · Decision Forks
DuPont Kept the Science and Spun Off the Bill
DuPont's own lab flagged its 'forever chemical' as toxic in 1961, then withheld it for forty years. When liability became unavoidable, it carved off Chemours in 2015 with liabilities allegedly capped at $1.42 billion - a single case soon settled for $671 million.
8 min