Winston Churchill once said that writing a book goes through five phases. In phase one, it is a novelty or a toy. But by phase five, it becomes a tyrant ruling your life. And just when you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling it to the public. Well, without all the wonderful people who helped us to make this book a reality, the monster would have won—hands down.
Our friend and colleague Morten Hansen deserves special mention for his contributions to the project. Morten took a leave from his job at Boston Consulting Group to join our Stanford research team for six months as a Fulbright Scholar, during which time he played a key role in selecting and analyzing the comparison companies. After he left the project, he remained in close touch with our work—pushing us continually to unshackle ourselves from our preconceptions and pay attention to the hard evidence, even if it didn’t fit with our previous views of the world. Morten is one of the most intellectually honest people we know and he never let us slide easily into the trap of seeing only what we wanted to see. As we developed our final ideas, we always asked ourselves, “Will this pass the ‘Morten Standard’?”
Darryl Roberts and Jose Vamos worked as research assistants on the project for multiple years while doing their graduate studies at Stanford. Darryl did the background coding on a number of very important companies in our project, including Merck, J&J, 3M, and Philip Morris. He also played a key role in the original CEO survey to select the visionary companies and served as an excellent sounding board for testing our ideas. Jose performed a large chunk of the financial analyses that underpin many of our findings. One piece of his work involved doing income statement and balance sheet financial ratio analysis for our companies going back to the year 1915—a huge project that in itself lasted a full year. Both Darryl and Jose did a superb job.
We were also blessed with a number of other dedicated research assistants—mostly MBA and Ph.D. students at Stanford—who joined our team for up to a year. In particular, we wish to thank: Tom Bennett, Chidam Chidambaram, Richard Crabb, Murali Dharan, Yolanda Alindor, Kim Graf, Debra Isserlis, Debbie Knox, Arnold Lee, Kent Major, Diane Miller, Anne Robinson, Robert Silvers, Kevin Waddell, Vincent Yan, and Bill Youstra.
We received immense help from the staff at Stanford’s Jackson Library, including Betty Burton, Sandra Leone, Janna Leffingwell, and Suzanne Sweeney. We are particularly thankful to research librarian Paul Reist for tracking down any number of obscure references on our companies from decades past. Carolyn Billheimer of Dialog Information Services, Inc., generously contributed her expertise and time to help us locate articles on the visionary companies. Linda Bethel, Peggy Crosby, Ellen DiNucci, Betty Gerhardt, Ellen Kitamura, Sylvia Lorton, Mark Shields, Karen Stock, and Linda Taoka all contributed their administrative talents at various points in the project. Ellen Kitamura organized the thousands of documents into nice, neat files and boxes—an effort that saved us hundreds of hours and frustration over the course of the project. Linda Taoka performed the nearly impossible task of managing our schedules so we could work on the project.
We are indebted to nearly all of the companies in our study—both visionary and comparison companies—for sending us current and archival materials on their company. Two individuals stand out for their invaluable help. Karen Lewis, of the Hewlett-Packard Company archives, spent days working with one of our research assistants to identify and explain literally hundreds of documents on the early days of HP. Without her help, we could not have possibly gained the depth of understanding about HP that proved so pivotal in our thinking. Jeff Sturchio, corporate archivist at Merck during our project, delivered historical materials by the boxload. He even managed to get original copies—on faded brittle parchment—of George Merck’s first speeches that outlined the vision for Merck. To both Karen and Jeff, we cannot thank you enough.
We benefited greatly from a number of thoughtful and incisive individuals who commented on early drafts of our work. In particular, we wish to thank: Jim Adams of Stanford, Les Denend of Network General, Steve Denning of General Atlantic, Bob Haas of Levi Strauss, Bill Hannemann of Giro Sport Design, Dave Heenan of Theo Davies, Gary Hessenauer of General Electric, Bob Joss of Westpac Banking Corporation, Tom Kosnik of Stanford, Edward Leland of Stanford, Arjay Miller of Stanford, Mads Øvlisen of Novo Nordisk, Don Petersen of Ford, Peter Robertson of USC, T.J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor, Jim Rosse of Freedom Communications, Ed Schein of MIT, Harold Wagner of Air Products, Dave Witherow of PC Express, Bruce Woolpert of Granite Rock, and John Young of Hewlett-Packard. Our most trusted advisers—our spouses Joanne Ernst and Charlene Porras—proofread and commented on chapters as they emerged from the laser printer. They lived with the book, helped us write it, and stayed married to us as we struggled through the long months of writing. Lucky we are.
Virginia Smith, our editor at HarperBusiness, worked closely with us from day one, editing and commenting on each chapter as we went along. She gave us many helpful tips and excellent overall guidance to improve the manuscript. Just as important, she believed in the project and gave us much-needed encouragement each step along the way. We did not want to let her down.
Finally, we could not have found a better adviser, ally, and friend than our agent Peter Ginsberg of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Peter, you saw the value of our work long before we had a proposal. You fought for us. You gave us momentum. Truly, without you, it would never have turned out this well. We are eternally grateful.