Evidence from Sustained Value Creators
An examination of the companies that have sustained both value creation
and at least 5.5 percent annual growth over ten years shows that
nearly 80 percent of these sustained value creators had one core business
with clear market leadership (figure 2-1). These businesses were
the source of most of their companies’ profitable growth. Another 17
percent of sustained value creators had multiple cores around which
they built their growth. Conglomerates, or highly diversified companies,
appeared in only 5 percent of the sustained value creators, as
compared to 21 percent in non-sustained value creators. The most
notable example of a successful highly diverse company is General
Electric, a collection of dominant core businesses. But General Electric
is virtually unique among conglomerates for its performance in
the past decade or century. In fact, it is the only company listed
among the original Dow Jones industrials in the late 1800s that
remains on the index. Moreover, most of its value creation in recent
years was in one dominant business—GE Capital.