Insider CEO is more successful

Solve the Succession Crisis by Growing Inside-Outside Leaders.
By: Bower, Joseph L.,
Harvard Business Review,
Nov 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 11

In my analysis of 1,800 successions, for instance, I found that company performance was significantly better when insiders succeeded to the job of CEO. Other researchers, including Jim Collins in Good to Great, have come to similar conclusions working from different data sets.


My research suggests that as a rule the best leaders are, therefore, people from inside the company who have somehow maintained enough detachment from the local traditions, ideology, and shibboleths to maintain the objectivity of an outsider.


Joseph L. Bower (jbower@hbs.edu) is the Donald Kirk David Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School in Boston. He is the author of The CEO Within: Why Inside Outsiders Are the Key to Succession Planning (Harvard Business School Press, 2007).