[robterrin]

Did nobody read the underlying research of the centerpiece study supporting this hypothesis? How did this headline and the article get written?

"We investigate these issues using the World Management Survey (WMS), an international data set providing detailed information on the management practices for a large sample of medium and large MANUFACTURING [emphasis added] firms (Bloom et al. 2014; Bloom and Van Reenen 2007) in thirty- two countries."

Sure, it seems relatively believable that large and medium sized manufacturing firms are better run by professional managers than their original founders, given the dynamics of that particular industry. Medium and large manufacturing firms require relatively common knowledge, have repeatable processes, are high volume/low margin, use commoditized inputs and outputs, as well as many other factors that make it ripe for bean counting as opposed to risk taking and vision. This is a straw man if I ever saw one.

[Edited typo]

[j45]

Many professional CEO's tend to focus on building moats around the business, to slow down innovation or disruption to protect what they have while today's product CEO's are far more into disruption.