The proper response to change, say the authors, is not 'how should we change' but rather 'what do we stand for and why do we exist'. This book, studying the enduring companies, looks at the timeless core values that have taken them through turbulent times. This is a look at 18 companies through the perspective of 700 CEO's. They were paired with their competitors. Boeing with McDonnell Douglas, Ford with GM, Motorola with Zenith, Philip Morris with RJR Nabisco, Walt Disney with Columbia Pictures, Sony with Kenwood etc. It's not that the comparison companies were bad ones. They just were no match for the visionary ones.

The whole premise of the study is that charismatic leaders, founders, and great CEO's pass on or die; visionary products and services, too get eclipsed, or become obsolete. Yet, companies endure. The visionary ones have something extraordinary about them and the book sets out to tap into that hidden strength.

Interestingly it is easy to be sidetracked by the philosophies of Thomas J. Watson (IBM), Sam Walton (Wal-mart) and the Robert G. Galvin (Motorola). IBM's three basic beliefs were to give full consideration to the individual employee, spend a lot of time cultivating happy customers, and to go that extra mile to get it right. These were not shaken when the company lost out to the PC upstarts.  It 'stuck to its knitting' --a phrase used in Peters and Waterman's 1982 book, "In Search of Excellence". There is a difference between having goals, say the authors, and having 'Big Hairy Audacious Goals' (BHAG's). Their example: In the 60's, President Kennedy could have had a goal (in the face of Soviet expansionism) to 'beef up the space program'. Instead, Kennedy stated that 'this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out', of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth."