Now, there's been a lot of research into how companies can repeat their previous successes, and it certainly hasn't been confined to the United States. It seems that most large industries are trying to repeat their own successes, and manage the knowledge they've acquired, but even so it has been shown that the overwhelming majority of attempts fail. A host of studies confirm this, covering a wide range of business settings, branch banks, retail stores, real estate agencies, factories, call centres, to name but a few. So why do so few managers get things right the second or third time? Let's consider one reason for failure, placing too much trust in the people who are running the successful operation, the "experts" shall we say. Managers who want to apply existing knowledge typically start off by going to an expert, such as the person who designed and is running a successful department store, and picking their brains. Now, this approach can be used if you want to gain a rough understanding of a particular system, or understand smaller, isolated problems.