The $4 billion offer by the Disney Company to purchase Marvel Entertainment, Inc. is the
apotheosis of an escape from disaster to rival even the most hair-raising Spiderman adventures. When the world leader in comic books, a dying medium, entered bankruptcy in 1996, only a few visionary loyalists saw a viable future — let alone a path to reattain leadership and high profitability.

Yet, as described several years ago in my book Unstoppable (HBP, 2007), this reincarnation is not so unique, but follows the four-part pattern that we discovered at Bain & Company in a twenty year analysis of successful transformations.

The four parts:

1. The imperative of a strong, differentiated core: The renewal of Marvel was based not on leaping to new hot markets, or dramatic new technologies, but the reapplication of the strongest assets in the company's historic core—its loyal customer base, its stable of 5,000 characters, its library of 30,000 market-tested stories, and its brand. These were the elements that made Marvel a dominant force at its best, and these are the elements that rejuvenated it.

2. The value of following the profit pool: Profitability in the entertainment world has shifted dramatically from channels (e.g., stations, magazines) to proprietary content and from analog to digital. Marvel's strategy follows the profit pool.

3. The power of a repeatable formula in the core: The most successful strategic transformations are not those that find a large singular opportunity, but those that find a repeatable formula to take the strongest elements in its core and reapply them to new situations over and over. This is quintessentially true in the case of Marvel's stream of movies, games, self-production initiatives, and even treatment of individual characters (e.g., Spiderman I, II, III....). The great and lasting renewals like the Apple music strategy or the rejuvenation of P&G reveal this lesson too.

4. The latent potential of hidden assets: We found that 90% of strategic comebacks were fueled, in part, by assets in the original core business when it was at its best that were adapted to a new environment and took on new value that had not been previously recognized. This was true of IBM's service business that led its turnaround, or Harman Kardon's automotive business that fueled its renewal, and even of Apple's software interface differentiation and young and loyal customer base.

So often, we found, companies held the right cards, but did not always see how to play that hand, or were organizationally constrained from acting on it until often too late. As surprising as it sounds, the ultimate lesson from Marvel, and others like it, is that the most important thing of all is self-awareness of the core. Yet sometimes that is also the most difficult insight of all — even though it can be right in front of us.

Chris Zook is co-head of the Global Strategy Practice at Bain & Company.
He is on The Times list of top 50 global business thinkers based on his work and
books on how companies find their next wave of profitable growth. Chris currently
lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Private non-farm employers cut 298,000 jobs in August, according to estimates by payroll company ADP, a figure that disappointed analysts' expectations but still showed a gradual easing of job losses.

Businesses with fewer than 50 employees lost 122,000 jobs in August, the smallest decline since September 2008, according to the report. Mid-size businesses (with between 50 and 500 employees) lost 116,000 jobs, and large companies lost 60,000. While that sounds like small businesses bear the brunt of job losses, it's less severe when you consider that they account for a larger share of employment, says Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, which developed the report.

Monthly job losses will continue to diminish for several months before employment hits bottom around the end of this year, Prakken says. He expects positive employment growth in 2010. The total 298,000 jobs lost was more severe than analysts' expectations of around 250,000 but not so far off that it's statistically meaningful, Prakken says.

Small business hiring may lead the recovery since small companies are more concentrated in the service sector, which has a better outlook than the goods producing sector. "Small businesses have their challenges in terms of access to capital and financing conditions, but I do expect them to participate in the recovery once it gets going," Prakken says.

The Labor Department reports official employment figures for August Friday morning. That report should show fewer net jobs lost because it includes government hiring, Prakken says, but is still likely to come in below analysts' expectations.