The Context of Hidden Champions

Abstract

Books that search for the Holy Grail of “success” in the corporate world have been either light or heavy. Usually, the former derive from observation and anecdotal evidence and are written by consultants, reflective CEOs and journalists, and directed towards a target market of busy businessmen looking for the next quick fix. This is a volume industry where customers seem to have an insatiable appetite for the vast material offered in airport bookshops. These publications are purposeful and their beauty lies in their simplicity, which allows the material to be digested easily and applied quickly. Moreover, their large customer base means that the proposed techniques can take root over many sectors and so they can soon become the next contemporary fashion. The downside is that fashions come and go. Perhaps the finest example of the genre is Peters and Waterman’s (1982) seminal study In Search of Excellence, a book that triggered a generation of these “success”-based publications in the modern era.