[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/03/26/art_peter_bregman.jpg caption=" Peter Bregman says the best strategy in the downturn may be to create your own work."]
By Peter Bregman
Special to CNN
Editor's note: Peter Bregman is chief executive of Bregman Partners Inc., a global management consulting firm, and the author of "Point B: A Short Guide to Leading a Big Change". He writes a weekly column, How We Work, for HarvardBusiness.org.
NEW YORK (CNN) - Madame Alexander was one of the great innovators in the doll industry.
According to the company that bears her name, she made the first doll with moving eyelids, the first doll based on a licensed character (Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind), the first doll fashioned after a living person (Queen Elizabeth) and many others.
But what's most interesting is how and why the company got started.
Beatrice Alexander's father owned the first doll "hospital" in New York City, where broken porcelain dolls were sent to be repaired. That got her thinking. Maybe porcelain wasn't the best material for a doll. So she sat around her kitchen table with her four sisters, and they started a business sewing dolls out of cloth.