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Thirty years ago, Ralph Larsen, then the CEO of Johnson & Johnson, was interviewed by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, who quoted him in their 1996 HBR article, “Building Your Company’s Vision,” which would become the defining playbook on organizational values. “The core values embodied in our credo might be a competitive advantage,” Larsen said, “but that is not why we have them. We have them because they define for us what we stand for, and we would hold them even if they became a competitive disadvantage in certain situations.”
