In 1981, Jack Welch, then CEO of General Electric, at the time the world’s largest industrial company, announced in a speech called “Growing Fast in a Slow-Growth Economy” that GE would no longer tolerate low-margin or low-growth units. Any business owned by GE that wasn’t first or second in its market and wasn’t growing faster than the market as a whole would be sold or shuttered. Whether or not the unit provided useful jobs to a community or useful services to customers was not a reason to keep on with a line of business. Only the contribution to GE’s growth and profits, and hence its stock
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