This is an exploration of why companies decline, looking particularly at why so few of the top 500 companies in the US have kept their place in the last ten years. The author approaches the question partly by looking at Japanese companies which have stayed successful, particularly Honda, and partly by a close look at big American companies like Ford and General Electric. He concludes that US and British companies tend to be run by small cliques of people who, no matter how hard they work and how determined they are, eventually run out of ideas, and that Japanese companies are much more democratically managed and thus more creative.