Every day we’re told that companies need to be flexible, adaptable, agile. Faced with impatient investors, capricious customers, and unpredictable competitors, they have to be in a constant state of regeneration, shucking off old strategies and structures, shedding old products, developing new skills. In the new economy, any business that stands still is finished.
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 1999 issue of Harvard Business Review.