The Corporation of Theseus, or Why There’s No Fountain of Youth (Even for Businesses)

What's in the D.N.A. of a business?

Is it the name? The culture? The product? The people?

It can't be, as all these aspects change with time: Facebook renamed itself to Meta; General Electric had to re-evaluated how it did business in the post Welch years; BlackBerry announced the end of service on their headsets; and after 27 years, Jeff Bezos passed the reins of CEO of Amazon to Andy Jassy.

Time and time again, companies face heavy change and when they do preach about the lessons learned, and speak on how they've grown but will continue to stay true to their mission and how they operate as a business. In a way it's sweet, but ultimately disingenuous; sooner or later a business must recognize that they are no longer the scrappy startup that it once was, and has now become something else entirely. Just as when Theseus returned from Crete, his ship had lost and gained many new planks; a company rarely stays the same as the company that it was when it was first founded.

This isn't meant to downplay the journey but instead to offer a warning. The lack of self awareness can be devastating. Case and point, Yahoo. In spite of various opportunities to gracefully accept their lack of competitiveness, Yahoo failed to recognize they were no longer the same company of the early aughts, and imploded.

Despite commonly held notions, more businesses fail then succeed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics only 25% of businesses make it 15 years or longer. Moreover, the average tenure of a business on the S&P is shrinking and expected to be between 15-20 years this decade.

It's easy to forget that it's not enough for a company to be successful in a market, it must continue to be successful or else find a new market to take share in. And just because a business has predicted one market trend, in no way means they will be able to predict the next. Industry titans like Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple aren't the norm, they are the exception.

There’s no shame in winding down a business much in the same way there’s no shame in growing old. Stakeholders will however have contempt for the destruction of value due to being unable to recognize a lack of competitive advantage.