What is the essence of a company?
Companies seem permanent – GE, Siemens, Ford, Nike, Apple, Four Seasons. But what are they really? A company is not a thing, like a shoe, for instance. If you take a shoe off, you can put it in the corner, and it will stay that way until it slowly degrades and, eventually, returns to dust. A company is less real than this: a business is just a pattern. Imagine that North America faced some devastating epidemic and civilization fell apart.… Read More »What is the essence of a company?