How do chemical firms last hundreds of years?
By 
Andy Extance2017-04-07T04:30:00
What distinguishes companies that thrive from others that failed?
Hearing the tale of the gold assaying business founded by Percival Norton Johnson in London in 1817, it’s easy to imagine a scene from a Charles Dickens novel. But Dickens was just five years old when Johnson started his company to determine the amount of gold in samples of ore and metal. Johnson Matthey is now celebrating its 200th anniversary, while GSK and Merck KGaA trace over 300 year histories. How did they succeed while contemporaries like ICI and Kodak failed?