Sango Bath (Saint-Gobain) founding and long-term strategy

Origin (1688) as a mirror-glass maker pouring molten glass onto plates and polishing with corundum. Used to make the long-time-horizon company-strategy point; contrasted with U.S. firms of which only five of the 1900 top 100 survived to 2000. Tom's former student is among Saint-Gobain's top 100 managers.

Opener for the long-term-economics framing. Saint-Gobain's 400-year history and "will we be in business 100 years from now" decision criterion is contrasted with the 95% mortality rate of 1900-era top-100 US companies.

There's only one company I know of that is more concerned about long-term viability than about next quarter. Well, plenty of companies worry about more than next quarter, but let me give the extreme example: the French company Saint-Gobain. Saint-Gobain made glass for the Versailles palace four hundred years ago. I have a former student who's risen fairly high in Saint-Gobain. He tells me the question they ask at their top management is, if we go into this business — and they're about a thirty-billion-dollar company, they make construction materials for homes, glass and drywall and things like that — will this help us be in business a hundred years from now? They're very proud of the fact that they've lasted for four hundred years as a company.