Question
Why do corporations die so much more frequently than universities?
Answer
It's a case of form following function. I'll ignore the formal structure of both, and consider the functional nature of the two types of organizations.
Universities exist to preserve, perpetuate and grow the DNA of a culture, and last as long as the culture does. When cultures shift, they find it hard to reinvent themselves. Note that they don't create cultures. They form around a cultural core once some sort of canonical foundations are identified.
Corporations exist to serve specific markets and can persist as long as the market does. When markets die, they find it hard to reinvent themselves.
Universities also typically don't compete as aggressively or kill each other the way businesses do, since the student/teacher ratio, requirement of physical presence in a geographic location, much stronger ability to differentiate and "collude" in legal ways, allows them to form a market of culture-banks that is less competitive, allowing more players to survive longer.
The tempo of cultural shifts is defined by a bass-notes spectrum. The tempo of market shifts is more towards the treble end.
Some data may help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis...
You'll notice that the oldest business (Kongo Gumi) was actually founded earlier than the oldest continuously-surviving university (probably Al Azhar in Egypt).
But if you did a histogram, you'd see that in some sense there are probably more older universities than older companies. Median age or something. That's my guess at least. Somebody else do the data-crunching.
These lists don't contain dead universities or businesses. Dead businesses don't leave signs behind, but dead universities do. One in India is Nalanda University. One in modern-day Pakistan is Takshashila (Taxila).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nal...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tak...
I am sure there are dead universities of similar antiquity in China, Persia, Egypt and Greece/Rome.
Both were ancient Buddhist universities. Both declined with the decline of Buddhism in India. Most of what we know about them is actually from Chinese sources (travelers between 400 BC to 400 AD) that reveal a thriving Buddhist academic culture that persisted for nearly a millennium after the Buddha died.
(Buddhism was primarily an urban religion in the subcontinent and developed a university culture, while Hinduism was more of a distributed, monastic culture where the cultural DNA was spread over a sort of p2p network of individual teachers' schools, or ashrams, kinda like ancient Greece, but more widespread).
Rather revealingly, the oldest business, Kongo Gumi, was a supplier of Buddhist temple construction services in Japan. Since cultures hang around a long time, the markets they create and hence the businesses they support, hang around an equally long time.
I bet you'd find if you looked, that the oldest surviving businesses in the UK are probably suppliers of ceremonial stuff to the royal family or the Church of England. I bet you'd find that the oldest businesses in Italy have something to do with the Vatican.
Universities exist to preserve, perpetuate and grow the DNA of a culture, and last as long as the culture does. When cultures shift, they find it hard to reinvent themselves. Note that they don't create cultures. They form around a cultural core once some sort of canonical foundations are identified.
Corporations exist to serve specific markets and can persist as long as the market does. When markets die, they find it hard to reinvent themselves.
Universities also typically don't compete as aggressively or kill each other the way businesses do, since the student/teacher ratio, requirement of physical presence in a geographic location, much stronger ability to differentiate and "collude" in legal ways, allows them to form a market of culture-banks that is less competitive, allowing more players to survive longer.
The tempo of cultural shifts is defined by a bass-notes spectrum. The tempo of market shifts is more towards the treble end.
Some data may help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis...
You'll notice that the oldest business (Kongo Gumi) was actually founded earlier than the oldest continuously-surviving university (probably Al Azhar in Egypt).
But if you did a histogram, you'd see that in some sense there are probably more older universities than older companies. Median age or something. That's my guess at least. Somebody else do the data-crunching.
These lists don't contain dead universities or businesses. Dead businesses don't leave signs behind, but dead universities do. One in India is Nalanda University. One in modern-day Pakistan is Takshashila (Taxila).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nal...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tak...
I am sure there are dead universities of similar antiquity in China, Persia, Egypt and Greece/Rome.
Both were ancient Buddhist universities. Both declined with the decline of Buddhism in India. Most of what we know about them is actually from Chinese sources (travelers between 400 BC to 400 AD) that reveal a thriving Buddhist academic culture that persisted for nearly a millennium after the Buddha died.
(Buddhism was primarily an urban religion in the subcontinent and developed a university culture, while Hinduism was more of a distributed, monastic culture where the cultural DNA was spread over a sort of p2p network of individual teachers' schools, or ashrams, kinda like ancient Greece, but more widespread).
Rather revealingly, the oldest business, Kongo Gumi, was a supplier of Buddhist temple construction services in Japan. Since cultures hang around a long time, the markets they create and hence the businesses they support, hang around an equally long time.
I bet you'd find if you looked, that the oldest surviving businesses in the UK are probably suppliers of ceremonial stuff to the royal family or the Church of England. I bet you'd find that the oldest businesses in Italy have something to do with the Vatican.