News & Opinion

Safe Is Not Safe (Failure - Part 4 of A Series)

April 26, 2007

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I think there is a general acceptance in business today doing the same thing year after year is not going to work. If you need data to confirm it, here is results from Chris Zook's latest book Unstoppable: [W]e found that 153 of the top 500 companies in 1994 did not even survive the following decade intact. They either ended up in bankruptcy or were acquired and integrated into a larger company.

I think there is a general acceptance in business today doing the same thing year after year is not going to work. If you need data to confirm it, here is results from Chris Zook's latest book Unstoppable:

[W]e found that 153 of the top 500 companies in 1994 did not even survive the following decade intact. They either ended up in bankruptcy or were acquired and integrated into a larger company. Of the 347 companies that survived and maintained independence, we judged that 130 had undergone a fundamental shift in their core business strategy and its key parameters. In other words, nearly six out of ten companies faced threats to their survival or independence, and only about half were able to meet those threats by redefining their strategies.

The rest of his book gives strategies for how to redefine the core of your business by uncovering and growing hidden assets. It comes out from Harvard Business School Press next week.

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