Revival of the Fittest―Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Managers Remake Them

"Ninety percent of companies worldwide failed to achieve sustained, profitable growth over the past decade. While current business wisdom calls for ""new rules"" for strategy and organization, a breakthrough book reveals that the answer to the growth dilemma actually lies in basic, enduring economic principles. Based on a sweeping ten-year study of more than two thousand technology, service, and product companies in a variety of industries, Profit from the Core argues that most growth strategies fail to deliver value-or even destroy it-primarily because they wrongly diversify from the core business. The authors contend that this timeless strategic precept-building market power in a well-defined core-remains the key source of competitive advantage and the most viable platform for successful expansion. Drawing from hundreds of in-depth case studies, interviews with more than one hundred CEOs, and the authors` broad consulting and business experience, the book identifies and explains three key factors that differentiate growth strategies that succeed from those that fail: (1) reaching full potential in the core business; (2) expanding into logical adjacent businesses surrounding that core; and (3) preemptively redefining the core business in response to market turbulence The authors identify the classic problems that incumbents encounter in each of these areas and-borrowing lessons from private equity and start-up ventures-explain how to resolve them in today`s rapidly changing business environment. The book concludes with guidelines for how companies can become sustained value creators-capable of successfully refining and revamping the core business over time.



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