Start-ups rarely survive their second birthday. Even established firms in the UK and the US average a life of only fifteen years. So how can your company build and sustain success for decades to come?

Professor Alex Hill has conducted thirteen years of groundbreaking research into a clutch of organisations that have outperformed their peers for over 100 years - from NASA to the New Zealand All Blacks, from Eton College and the Royal College of Art to the Royal Marines and the Royal Shakespeare Company. And what he has found is that these very different organisations all share remarkably similar strategies when it comes to building and maintaining excellence and success - strategies that frequently fly in the face of conventional business wisdom.

Here Professor Hill shares the twelve traits that have set these organisations apart for over a century, from the way they analyse success and failure to their approach to finding the best people and the brightest new ideas. In so doing, he identifies the strategies and habits that you can employ in your company to create a strong and stable core and to ensure the same long-term prosperity. In short, he shows you how to build a promising enterprise into an enduring, great organisation.