The fall guy

You’re known for your studies of successful organisations in your books, but in your latest, How the Mighty Fall, you look at failure. What drove you to write it? The driving force in my life and work is curiosity. Having seen how some once-great companies had declined, I started to get interested in that process: how companies stop being great. I thought: “My goodness! If they can fail, anyone can.” Was it the credit crunch that provoked these thoughts? No. The research project for the book started in early 2005 and I’d been thinking about it for some time. I was simply lucky that my book’s publication coincided with the recession.