Assertion certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Past McKinsey research claiming rapid corporate turnover was misleading

Andy Pflaum · 20VC: The Biggest Growth Opportunities for Young People in Tech Today, Why Distributed Workforces Are The Secret To Beating Incumbents & Why It Has Never Been Easier To Operate A Company Than Today with Andy Pflaum, Founder & CEO @ Astro · Feb 2, 2018 · at 8:16

Andy Pflaum, founder and CEO of Astro, discusses the durability of tech incumbents and pushes back against popular business literature on corporate turnover.

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“I'd like to thank some somewhat misleading research that was put out 10 or 15 years ago by McKinsey and some other academics that suggested that the largest companies in the country were turning over at a very rapid pace. You can find a lot of articles, and you can find them in great sources like Harvard Business Review and MIT Technology Review that say the big companies are all going down at a faster than ever rate. And frankly, that was some misleading research that led to that.”

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