If we pick a number of successful companies and search for what they have in common, we’ll never isolate the reasons for their success, because we have no way of comparing them with less successful companies.

By looking only at companies that perform well, we can never ...

Success cannot be usually attributed to one factor.

Many studies show that a particular factor—strong company culture or customer focus or great leadership—leads to improved performance. 

But since many of these factors are highly correlated, the effect of each one is...

Our thinking about business is shaped by a number of delusions - ones that distort our understanding of company performance, that make it difficult to know why one company succeeds and another fails.

These errors of thinking pervade much that we read about business, whethe...

If your data sources are corrupted by the halo effect, it doesn't matter how much data you have gathered, or how sophisticated your methodology was.

Data quality and quantity are equally important when it comes to research. If one takes a wrong assumption and backs it up wi...

This is our tendency to make inferences about specific traits on the basis of a general impression.

In the business world, it refers to the tendency to look at a company’s overall performance and make attributions about its culture, leadership, values, and more.

It may be true that successful companies often pursued a highly focused strategy, but that doesn’t mean highly focused strategies often lead to success.

Some companies have a focused strategy and some change their strategy based on competition, market, and internal factors. Some are success...

Almost all high-performing companies regress over time. The promise of a blueprint for lasting success is attractive but not realistic.

Success is transitory, and many companies that have outperformed in the past, won't do so in the future. A company canno...

Company performance is relative, not absolute. A company can improve and fall further behind its rivals at the same time.

A company’s performance should be measured relative to other similar companies’ performance as it is a competitive environment. Measuri...