Virtually all organizations face critical transition points in their life cycle, when they must change how they play the game, or perish. Flamholtz and Randle focus here on three critical moments: the move from entrepreneurial to professional management, when a firm reaches a stage of growth where it can no Longer operate in an informal, unstructured way; the revitalization of an established business that is Losing ground to competitors; and a radical change in a business vision. The authors show, for instance, how American Century Investors made the transformation from a $50 million entrepreneurship to a professionally managed company with a market value of $2 billion; how IBM, one of the great American corporations, was forced by the proliferation of PCs in the 1980s to overhaul its business to survive; and how Starbucks Coffee, originally a SeattLe coffee-bean store, was inspired by Milan's romantic coffee bars to recreate itself and transformed an entire industry. The book concludes with a look at how one company -- Belt Carter Olive Company -- pulled together all the concepts and tools presented in the book and successfully changed the game.