What do the extraordinarily successful companies have in common? To find out, we looked for correlations. We know that correlations are not always reliable nevertheless, in the 27 survivors, our group saw four shared personality traits that could explain their longevity . Conservatism in financing. The companies did not risk their capital gratuitously. They understood the meaning of money in an old-fashioned way they knew the usefulness of spare cash in the kitty. Money in hand allowed them to snap up options when their competitors could not. They did not have to convince third-party financiers of the attractiveness of opportunities they wanted to pursue. Money in the kitty allowed them to govern their growth and evolution. Sensitivity to the world around them. Whether they had built their fortunes on knowledge or on natural resources, the living companies in our study were able to adapt themselves to changes in the world around them. As wars, depressions, technologies, and politics surged and ebbed, they always seemed to excel at keeping their feelers out, staying attuned to whatever was going on. For information, they sometimes relied on packets carried over vast distances by portage and ship, yet they managed to react in a timely fashion to whatever news they received. They were good at learning and adapting. Awareness of their identity. No matter how broadly diversified the companies were, their employees all felt like parts of a whole. Lord Cole, chairman of in the 1960s, for example, saw the company as a fleet of ships. Each ship was independent, but the whole fleet was greater than the sum of its parts. The feeling of belonging to an organization and identifying with its achievements is often dismissed as soft. But case histories repeatedly show that a sense of community is essential for long-term survival. Managers in the living companies we studied were chosen mostly from within, and all considered themselves to be stewards of a longstanding enterprise. Their top priority was keeping the institution at least as healthy as it had been when they took over. Tolerance of new ideas. The long-lived companies in our study tolerated activities in the margin: experiments and eccentricities that stretched their understanding. They recognized that new businesses may be entirely unrelated to existing businesses and that the act of starting a business need to be centrally controlled. W.R. Grace, from its very beginning, encouraged autonomous experimentation. The company was founded in 1854 by an Irish immigrant in Peru and traded in guano, a natural fertilizer, before it moved into sugar and tin. Eventually, the company established Pan American Airways. Today it is primarily a chemical company, although it is also the leading provider of kidney dialysis services in the United States. By definition, a company that survives for more than a century exists in a world it cannot hope to control. Multinational companies are similar to the long-surviving companies of our study in that way. The world of a multinational is very large and stretches across many cultures. That world is inherently less stable and more difficult to influence than a confined national habitat. Multinationals must be willing to change in order to succeed. These four traits form. the essential character of companies that have functioned successfully for hundreds of years. Given this basic personality, what priorities do the managers of living companies set for themselves and their employees? Which of tile following does not belong to conservatism in financing?