Chapter 9
THE LEGACY
What we leave behind
The average company lives thirty years. What makes some last a hundred?
Not technology — it grows old. Not products — they get replaced.
What remains is thought. A culture rooted in how people live.
We want to leave what will never appear on a balance sheet: someone saying 'that store changed my life', a child saying 'I'm proud I grew up in that town', a partner saying 'I'm glad we worked with that company.'
Buildings crumble. Culture, when people carry it forward, does not.