The Five Big Moves

Definition

Of the ten predictive variables in the book's model (see Endowment, Trends, and Moves), five are within a leadership team's control: dynamic resource reallocation, programmatic M&A and divestitures, capital expenditure, productivity improvement, and differentiation improvement. Each only counts once it clears a defined, outside-view threshold (for example, "programmatic M&A" means at least one deal a year cumulating to more than 30% of market cap over a decade, with no single deal exceeding 30%) — and the effect of stacking moves is sharply nonlinear rather than additive.

In the Book

Chapter 7 shows that companies making one or two big moves roughly double their odds of jumping from the middle to the top of the Power Curve (8% to 17%); three moves lift the odds to 47%. Of 60 companies that pulled four or five levers over the study decade, 40 moved up and not a single one moved down. The chapter's central cases are Corning — which pulled all five levers after the dot-com crash wiped out 99% of its share price, lifting average annual economic profit by roughly $1.7 billion, 90% of it attributable to the company's own moves rather than market tailwinds — and Harris Corp, which pulled four of five and achieved a 13% CAGR in total shareholder return. The book also documents "programmatic M&A" specifically through WPP (271 acquisitions in a decade, rising from $8 million to $677 million in economic profit) and Axel Springer's 67 acquisitions driving its print-to-digital pivot, arguing that repeated practice — not occasional large bets — is what builds M&A capability. Most companies, by contrast, make zero or one big move over ten years, a pattern the book attributes to risk aversion and the peanut-butter instinct to spread resources rather than concentrate them.

Why It Matters

The finding that combining several threshold-crossing moves compounds odds nonlinearly — rather than each move contributing a small additive improvement — reframes "boldness" as measurably the safer strategy, since companies making zero moves showed the highest rates of decline. This is a general argument against half-measures in any resourced intervention: below a real threshold, effort is largely wasted, and stacking multiple threshold-crossing interventions produces returns that compound rather than merely add.