What Sets Sustainable Companies Apart

Chris Zook (Bain & Company's head of Global Strategy) has just released his newest book "Unstoppable: Finding Hidden Assets to Renew the Core and Fuel Profitable Growth" (Harvard Business School Press)

• Unstoppable reveals that the pace of business change continues to accelerate, with nearlythree out of four companies at risk of fundamental change or extinction within ten years.Zook finds that once-successful companies can transform themselves and renew theircore business through a cycle of F-E-R: Focus (on the core business), Expand (on newadjacent businesses) and Redefine (the core business).

In Unstoppable, Zook shows companies how to renew their business strategy when it stops fueling profitable growth, and provides a roadmap for how companies can make fundamental changes in their core business even as they continue managing their business today.

It's a great story about the path to sustainable business excellence, talking about the ways that companies reach the natural limits of their growth formula.

What sets the companies that survive apart?

• Their ability to find the sources of renewal in customer segments, product lines, processes, and capabilities that are thriving but undervalued.

This conclusion is based on a study of the financial performance and rate of change in Fortune 500 companies since 1994, and 25 case studies of successful corporate redefinition.