Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman open with their foundational, field-shaping research finding: consistently excellent companies share identifiable common management practices and cultural characteristics, providing a template for organizational excellence applicable across industries.

Why this common-practices finding proved so influential:

• This research, among the first rigorous attempts to identify what specifically distinguishes excellent companies, significantly shaped subsequent decades of management theory and practice
• Identifying these common practices provides a practical template other organizations could potentially apply, rather than treating organizational excellence as purely idiosyncratic to each specific company
• This opening establishes the book's foundational, field-shaping research approach, motivating its subsequent detailed examination of specific identified practices

This opening establishes the book's foundational, historically influential research finding regarding common practices shared among consistently excellent companies.