Start-ups rarely survive their second birthday. Even established firms in the UK and the US average a life of only fifteen years. So how can your company build and sustain success for decades to come?  Professor Alex Hill has conducted thirteen years of groundbreaking research into a clutch of organisations that have outperformed their peers for over 100 years – from NASA to the New Zealand All Blacks, from Eton College and the Royal College of Art to the Royal Marines and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In his new book, Centennials, Professor Hill shares the twelve traits that have set these organisations apart for over a century, from the way they analyse success and failure to their approach to finding the best people and the brightest new ideas. In so doing, he identifies the strategies and habits that you can employ in your company to create a strong, stable core and ensure the same long-term prosperity while remaining dynamic. In short, he shows you how to build a promising enterprise into an enduring, great organisation. In this interview, I speak to Professor Alex Hill, Director of The Centre for High Performance (a collaboration between senior faculty at the Universities of Kingston, Duke CE, London Business School and Oxford). We discuss how some of the world’s longest living companies have endured, and how we can do the same.