Here are the four key correlations found between the longest lasting companies, as stated in the book:

Conservatism in Financing. The companies did not risk their capital gratuitously. They understood the meaning of money in an old-fashioned way; they knew the usefulness of spare cash in the kitty. Money in hand allowed them to snap up options when their competitors could not. They did not have to convince third-party financiers of the attractiveness of opportunities they wanted to pursue. Money in the kitty allowed them to govern their growth and evolution.

Make a mental note: spend your money wisely . Here’s a quick scenario for the affiliate marketer. You just made a tidy profit of $60k from your last campaign. You can either a) buy yourself that super sweet sports car you’ve always wanted or b) leave it in the bank in order to fund the future growth of your company. If you want to be in the game for the long run, it’s pretty easy to see which option is truly the best to take for the future of you and your company.

Sensitivity to the World Around Them. Whether they had built their fortunes on knowledge (such as DuPont’s technological innovations) or on natural resources (such as the Hudson’s Bay Company’s access to the furs of Canadian forests), the living companies in our study were able to adapt themselves to changes in the world around them. As wars, depressions, technologies, and politics surged and ebbed, they always seemed to excel at keeping their feelers out, staying attuned to whatever was going on. For information, they sometimes relied on packets carried over vast distances by portage and ship, yet they managed to react in a timely fashion to whatever news they received. They were good at learning and adapting.

Ok, this stuff goes far into history, but the point of this is clear: the companies which have lasted for a very long amount of time have all adapted to their surroundings. For the affiliate, the webmaster or the eBusiness owner, the ‘world’ changes at a faster rate – niches that are super hot can pretty much die in a matter of months. So if you want to stick around, you must look into building a strategy and investing some time and money into long term niches. If you’re a short term kind of affiliate (advertiser, or business owner), remember to keep your wits about you and have your eyes fixated on latest developments. As one affiliate who usually likes to speak in third person once said: ‘Adapt or get paved the fuck over’.

Awareness of Their Identity. No matter how broadly diversified the companies were, their employees all felt like parts of a whole. Lord Cole, chairman of Unilever in the 1960s, for example, saw the company as a fleet of ships. Each ship was independent, but the whole fleet was greater than the sum of its parts. The feeling of belonging to an organization and identifying with its achievements is often dismissed as soft. But case histories repeatedly show that a sense of community is essential for long-term survival. Managers in the living companies we studied were chosen mostly from within, and all considered themselves to be stewards of a long-standing enterprise. Their top priority was keeping the institution at least as healthy as it had been when they took over.

I think this point is far more important to huge companies than it is to the kind of business we do in the ‘internet world’. Affiliate in particular usually work completely alone, and outsource their needs as required. Nonetheless, if you’ve got a business or an established website and you have people working for you then I won’t dispute that the above is pretty important for your success. Infer what you will from the above passage.

Tolerance of New Ideas. The long-lived companies in our study tolerated activities in the margin: experiments and eccentricities that stretched their understanding. They recognized that new businesses may be entirely unrelated to existing businesses and that the act of starting a business need not be centrally controlled. W.R. Grace, from its very beginning, encouraged autonomous experimentation. The company was founded in 1854 by an Irish immigrant in Peru and traded in guano, a natural fertilizer, before it moved into sugar and tin. Eventually, the company established Pan American Airways. Today it is primarily a chemical company, although it is also the leading provider of kidney dialysis services in the United States.

Our business rapidly changes, new ideas come and go all the time, and there’s really no chance of success unless you try out new things all the time in this business. So realistically speaking the above point should already be pretty obvious to you.

I also came across this awesome statement in the text:

Stora was in copper in order to exist; it did not exist to be in copper.

Replace ‘copper’ with your industry and you’ve got yourself a brilliant quote. Try out new things and don’t just stick to one type of business/industry. If you want to last you’ll need to adapt and change over the years, so you might as well get ready now.

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