Forever Fundamentals are the Operating Rules of Corporate Longevity.
How Succession, Identity, Stakeholders, Systems and Weekly Discipline Produce Corporate Longevity.
The Survival Problem, Plainly Stated
Most companies do not last. Fewer than half of publicly traded firms survive more than eleven years; 75% of firms will dissolve in roughly 22 years. Against this statistical norm there are exceptions, businesses that have persisted for centuries or millennia. The Roland Berger piece “The Forever Firms” isolates what those exceptions have in common.
Their survival is not accident or wealth alone: it is a set of repeatable operating rules. This article translates those rules into leadership practice.
Succession is a System
Old-old companies habitually design succession as an institutional process rather than a family crisis.
Nishiyama Onsen (Japan, founded 705 CE) remains family-run because leadership moves are anticipated and ritualized.
Staffelter Hof (Germany, vineyard, 862 CE) and similar firms preserve continuity via formal local practices.
Acetaia Giusti (Modena, 400-year vinegar maker) saw owners return to lead deliberately and to protect employees and reputation.
The operating rule: build explicit transfer mechanisms (apprenticeship, mentorship, named successors, governance rituals) years before a transfer is required. When succession is a rehearsed process, institutional memory and operational norms survive generational turnover. When it is ad-hoc, identity fractures and value erodes.
Identity is a Transmitted Asset
Old-old firms have a clear, transmissible sense of identity that is passed generation to generation.
Marinelli Bell Foundry (Agnone, 14th century) demonstrates identity preserved through symbolic rights (papal privileges) and craft continuity.
Van Eeghen Group (Amsterdam, founded 1662) exhibits identity shaped by faith-rooted values and the discipline of trade.
Practical implication: identity must be explicit in practice, not slogans but daily rituals, product choices, material standards, and service modes that new employees learn by doing. Identity functions as a governance constraint: it narrows acceptable strategic moves and protects the organization from erosion by fashionable priorities.
Figure Out Who Cares About You
Jim Collins’ test “If we disappeared, who would miss us?” is a diagnostic of relevance. Forever firms survive because they have constituencies that would actively notice and defend their disappearance.
REI-type member models (reported analogues in the piece) show how embedded customer communities act as custodians.
In Japan, hospitality businesses treat customer and provider as equals; that mutual respect produces long-term loyalty used as a survival anchor.
Operational rule: map constituencies (customers, local community, religious or civic bodies, employees, members). Ensure at least one constituency would meaningfully object to the company’s disappearance. If none exist, longevity is unlikely.
Systems That Outlast Individuals
Longevity is engineered through systems: training pipelines, institutional knowledge, and governance procedures that do not depend on a single leader.
The report cites firms that explicitly invest in leadership training and slow managerial progression rather than rapid promotion for short-term returns.
Van Eeghen and similar family firms treat leadership development as an ongoing, generational investment rather than episodic succession.
This is capital allocation: invest in systems (apprenticeships, documented craft processes, internal rotations, governance charters) the same way you invest in factories or IP. Those systems internalize the firm’s operating tempo and priorities.
Weekly Discipline Compounds Long-Term Survival
Duco Sickinghe (Van Eeghen Group) frames endurance operationally: he does not ask for ten-year plans; he asks what a firm intends to do next week. The point: long-term survival is the aggregate of disciplined short-term execution.
Micro-discipline, weekly checklists, customer touchpoints, production standards, compounds into multi-decadal reliability.
Firms that “do well every week” keep customers, avoid crises, and preserve identity.
Leadership imperative: translate long-run strategy into short-run habits and measure them. Weekly discipline produces the continuity that makes succession and identity meaningful.
Characteristic Behaviors And Cultural Postures
The Roland Berger piece collects consistent behavioral patterns among forever firms:
Slow, conservative growth rather than aggressive scaling. Most have fewer than 300 employees.
Risk-averse posture: many explicitly reject expansion that risks core identity.
Value-driven financial choices: some long-lived firms prioritize community and employee welfare over accumulation.
Purpose as navigational clarity: Japanese firms often articulate purpose statements and applying it to local sourcing and arrangements.
Stories and rituals: founding stories and practice-based narratives are actively used to transmit meaning; Jim Collins contends stories carry existential identity, not marketing spin.
Association membership: Henokiens, a network of family firms over 200 years old, shows structural recognition of these practices among peers.
Each behavior operates as a governance device: the combination creates an internal constraint system that preserves the firm across external shocks.
What Longevity is Not
The report is explicit about common misreadings:
Longevity is not mere size or market power. Small, focused firms can persist longer than sprawling conglomerates.
Longevity is not aggressive innovation for its own sake. Old-old firms adopt change selectively and only when it preserves identity.
Longevity is not purely an outcome of favorable geography or patronage; operational codes (the five fundamentals) explain persistence across cultures and geographies.
Recommendations
Design Succession Playbooks: set timelines, grooming stages, and ceremonial transfers; test them in low-risk transitions.
Embed Identity In Practice: convert brand identity into daily operational standards and apprenticeship learning objectives.
Map and Maintain Constituencies: run the “who would miss us?” test annually and invest where loyalty is weak.
Fund Leadership Systems: treat training, rituals, and governance as capital expenditures with explicit ROI metrics (retention, customer continuity).
Institutionalize Weekly Accountability: convert strategy into weekly KPIs tied to quality and customer contact; audit them ruthlessly.
Bottom Line: Forever Fundamentals Are Actionable Operating Rules
The Roland Berger pages make one argument: corporate longevity is engineered. Firms that survive centuries do five things repeatedly, institutionalize succession, transmit identity, secure constituencies that would miss them, build durable systems, and practice short-interval discipline.
These are not cultural platitudes; they are operating rules. Ignore them and the statistical norm (collapse within decades) asserts itself. Embed them and time becomes an asset rather than a threat.
