Stockholm School of Economics

The Living Company

Growth, learning and longevity in business
Arie de Geus

Nobody has the right to blame the author (unlike numerous business oracles) for flying up in the clouds, boasting or twaddling. 38 years of work for a company like Shell is no joke.
If you and your company are fed up with globalization, e-conomics and reengineering, try the vivifying remedy from Arie de Geus: new Chile potatoes dressed with English cream and decorated with Dutch rose petals - and you are bound to feel relieved.
Having tasted the dish, you will find out the reasons of an unsuccessful merger, learn how to damage a company by firing more employees than necessary, and what you have to do to kill the business in three goes, or - if you choose - to luckily escape the fate.
Obsessed with playing the daily business technology game, we forget that everything in the world is done by people and for people. Not seeing the wood for the trees has always been a manager's most terrible sin, and, whatever business analysts mutter, the laws of nature have not changed.
After you've read the book, you will fell there's only one thing missing: the author hasn't told everything he knows about the nature of companies.

References

"One of the top ten books", Business Week

In order to get the answers to the question: Why do some companies die, and others thrive for long years? - Philip Kotler recommends reading three books: Jim Collins and Jerry Porras's "Built to Last", "From Good to Great" by Jim Collins, and Atie De Geus's "The Living Company".