The market performs better than companies do

From an interview in McKinsey Quarterly:

Richard Foster: In the book, Sarah Kaplan and I show that over the long term, the market performs better than companies do. There can be periods - 5, 7, 10, even 15 years - when that isn't the case, but corporate performance always reverts to a lower level than the market because the economy is changing at a faster pace and on a larger scale than any individual company so far has been able to do without losing control. That's the challenge: to create, operate, and trade - to divest old businesses and acquire or build new businesses - at the pace and scale of the market without losing control.