Adjacent: Business History Lenses · Adjacent
Business Cycles & Corporate Survival
Why most companies die: S&P 500 tenure shrinking, the corporate life cycle, recessions as extinction events, and what survivors do differently (liquidity, low leverage, investing in downturns).
Step 1 of 5 · Overview25 min read ·
Key idea
Prereqs: Business cycles (macro). Next: General Electric; Big Debt Crises. Sources: Aswath Damodaran, *The Corporate Life Cycle* (2024); Innosight, S&P 500 corporate longevity study (2021); Gulati, Nohria & Wohlgezogen, 'Roaring Out of Recession', *HBR* (2010).Next: 1. Life cycle