It's interesting to contrast this with Japan. Japan has some of the longest-lived companies [1]. Construction, hotels, sake and confectionery feature prominently. Meanwhile, the average company lifespan on the S&P500 went down from 32 years in 1965 to 20 years last year. [2]

I suspect that the difference has a lot to do with culture. The Japanese companies with a long life are probably smaller, family-run, and don't go aggressively for growth. When your company has been going for over 200 years, I imagine one feels a sense of "don't fuck it up." Compare that to the US, where it's always ever onwards and upwards, always going for growth.

The Japanese have some ideas which seem bizarre to the West. Like, companies in those positions might "adopt a son". Typically they're 25-30 year-old men who take on the name of their adopted families. They then run the business (although presumably not straight away). Seems weird, but look at the results.

These small Japanese businesses seem more in-tune with their regular employees, too, treating them like an extended family, to some extent. There's no hire and fire mentality that we've been seeing lately; with the likes of Microsoft scooping up a big workforce only to turn around a couple of years later and reverse it. It's a shitty way to treat people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1259275/average-company-...