the bigger the stakes, the greater the value of marginal increments in skills. In 1960, the corporation ranked 100 on the Fortune 500 had sales of $3.2 billion.4 In 2010, the 100th-ranked corporation had sales of $24.5 billion—almost an eightfold increase in constant dollars. That kind of supersizing in the corporate world occurred across the range—the corporation ranked 500 in 2010 was about eight times larger than the 500th-ranked corporation in 1960. The dollar value of a manager who could increase his division’s profitability by 10 percent instead of 5 percent escalated accordingly.
