It was a time when every good business idea seemed to be born in Japan, and most did not appear transferable to the United States. While partners at McKinsey, however, the authors examined 43 successful American companies and detailed readily transferable attributes shared by most of them. American management, they found, suffered from myopia that prevented experimentation and innovation; it suffered from policies that prevented participation in decision making; and it suffered from young M.B.A. students unskilled in the art of management.

The thriving companies that the authors found were news to business leaders, politicians, and business schools, and Excellence became one of the best selling business books in publishing history. It helped American executives look into the mirror and see that some of the things they were doing were not bad at all, that others were excellent, and that they could borrow excellent ideas from each other.