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Lots of companies don't succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future.

When someone takes their existing business and tries to transform it into something else - they fail. In technology that is often the case. Look at Kodak: it was the dominant imaging company in the world. They did fabulously during the great depression, but then wiped out the shareholders because of technological change.

I think American industry has lost perspective about their products.

What basically happens is that when a company becomes great, and I'm being a bit rude here, people think they're some kind of genius. So now we can move into all sorts of other businesses because the net bottom line is, it's because we're just geniuses. They become overconfident and expand too far.

There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment - and you start to decline.

Why is it that big companies fail when the technology changes? It happens in every industry, so what's the pattern? What are they all doing wrong?

Not to say that corporations are perfect today, but even grand corporations like Dupont have made immense progress in translating some of their past environmentally damaging practices into new profit opportunities.

Corporate America cannot afford to remain silent or passive about the downward spiral we are undergoing. It cannot turn a blind eye to how difficult the experience of life is for so many of their customers.

Just because a company falls doesn't invalidate what we can learn by studying that company when it was at its historical best.

I think that companies always become complacent, over time. Or most companies, that is.