General Motors is stumbling towards oblivion. The failing giant was the iconic corporation of the 20th century. It implemented mass production, created the idea of professional management and defined a structure for the diversified industrial corporation. These features of our industrial landscape, today obvious and inevitable, were novelties a century ago.

At one Financial Times breakfast, we debated which were the most important business books ever published. I nominated three. Peter Drucker’s Concept of the Corporation pioneered the intellectually rigorous analysis of management issues. Alfred Sloan’s My Years at General Motors is the most thoughtful business autobiography. Alfred Chandler’s Strategy and Structure turned business history and corporate strategy into academic disciplines. Only then did I notice that all were about GM. The history of modern business is the history of GM, and vice versa.