Why you will probably live longer than most big companies

Shell’s famous study of corporate longevity (see Chapter 2), which de Geus directed, found that the average life expectancy of Fortune 500 firms was less than forty years, but the study also found some twenty companies around the world which had survived two centuries or longer. Looking for common features that transcended differences in history, n

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As I mentioned, most of the oldest companies in the world are in Japan. In a survey of 5,500 companies over 200 years old, 3,100 are based in Japan. The rest are in some of the older countries in Europe.

But — and this was a fact I found curious, and one that speaks to the cyclical nature of things — 90% of the companies that are over 200 years old

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