In Why Smart Executives Fail, Sydney Finkelstein unveils the extraordinary results of the largest research project ever devoted to leadership failure. Over the past six years, Professor Finkelstein and his team conducted hundreds of interviews with insiders at top companies that have risen and fallen - and, for some, risen again - to expose the root of these failures and to gain insight into the people behind them. One astonishing finding: businesses that seemed to have nothing in common turned out to have failed for exactly the same reasons. Even the excuses that failed managers offered turned out to be the same in case after case.