It is the philosopher's stone of corporate strategy, the eternal question that keeps business theorists and management planners awake at night.
What makes a successful company? What are the ingredients that give a firm its sense of mission, its motivation, its reason for existence? The search for this elusive alchemy has spawned an extensive academic literature and a multi-billion dollar management consultancy industry.
Charlotte Butler and John Keary examine the question through the experience of one company, the Inchcape group, a London-listed overseas trading company with historic links to Hong Kong.
Once a buccaneering colonial-era trading house (whose founder, the first Lord Inchcape, turned down the throne of Albania in 1921 on the grounds that it was 'not in my line'), Inchcape has gone through several post-war transformations.
Its fortunes have risen and fallen along with the fickle tides of stock market opinion and the changing fads of management theory.
Lauded for its 'diversification' in the 1960s and 70s, the group fell out of favour when 'focus' became the new mantra and conglomerate a dirty word.