Bombardier
Canadian aerospace company that developed the C Series aircraft program before selling it to Airbus in 2018 for effectively zero dollars.
Canadian aerospace company that developed the C Series aircraft program before selling it to Airbus in 2018 for effectively zero dollars. The Bombardier team had developed agile engineering practices - rapid prototyping, direct engineer-to-shop-floor communication, verbal approvals for low-risk changes - that enabled fast iteration on a young aircraft program.
Post-acquisition, these locally-adapted practices faced strong selection pressure as Airbus imposed its heavyweight processes designed for mature programs like the A320. The case demonstrates how practices adaptive in one environment (startup-like aircraft development) can be maladaptive when imposed on different contexts.