Quotes from Chris Zook

Since 1990, we've found that the returns to shareholders in public companies where the founder is still involved are three times higher than in other companies

That is why 85 percent of executives perceive that the key barriers to sustained and profitable growth that they face are on the inside.

The better performing of your business units are likely to be those operating the furthest below their full potential.

Consider this: on average, new companies that reach Fortune 500 scale today are doing so more than two times faster than just two decades ago, and the fastest—the world record holders for scaling—are exceeding prior records by a wide margin.

He had a reputation for clearing his desk of every file before leaving every day. Without a haystack, he felt, you can't lose any needles.

The odds of success (surviving and reestablishing a profitable trajectory) in redefinition are extremely low, less than one in ten. The exceptions—such as Marvel Entertainment (from comics to movies), IBM (from hardware to services and software), and De Beers (from mining to consumer focus and retail)—were able to rebuild their core model around "hidden assets," deep strengths in the core business that had not been previously utilized.

The key to sustained and profitable growth is to find a repeatable formula that utilizes the most powerful and differentiated strengths in your core and applies them to a series of new "adjacent" markets.

Only after that final question do you finally get to the fundamental capabilities