It’s one of those stats that’s constantly thrown around at conferences: 80% of the companies that existed before 1980 are no longer around—and another 17% probably won’t be here in five years. Dartmouth professor Vijay Govindarajan heard versions of this so often that he eventually began using it himself—even though he didn’t know whether it was accurate or, if it was, why it was true. So he and his colleague Anup Srivastava decided to take a rigorous look at corporate longevity.
A version of this article appeared in the December 2016 issue (pp.24–25) of Harvard Business Review.
