Jack forged ahead, tying von Clausewitz to General Electric—not the easiest thing to do—and declared that in the 1980s, which he predicted would be a slow-growth decade, the only way for companies to survive was to “insist upon being number one or number two” in every business they chose to be in. The corollary to his thesis was to wonder if it still made sense to be in businesses where it was not possible to be among the industry’s market leaders.
