Reality today is akin to the Red Queen effect from Alice in Wonderland: running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place
Longevity is the capacity to change, not to stay with what you’ve got. Too many companies build up an internal commitment to their existing businesses. Rather than changing, they find it easier to just keep doing the same things that brought them success. They codify why they’re successful; they write guidebooks; they create teaching manuals—they create whole cultures around sustaining the model. That’s great, until the model gets threatened by external change; then, all too often, the adjustment is discontinuous. - Lou Gerstner, Chairman and CEO of IBM (1993–2002)
[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]