The sheer extent of the control each of the “Big Four” tech companies exert over our daily lives makes imagining a world without them almost impossible. Amazon is already the second-largest private employer in the US. Apple is the world’s first trillion-dollar company. Google represents arguably the biggest unregulated monopoly in the history of business, while Facebook, which has exercised an increasingly worrying influence over world politics, is the fastest adopted service in the history of humanity. Stats like these beg the question – will these companies be around forever?

In his new book, The Infinite Game, organisational consultant Mr Simon Sinek proposes a way of answering. The key to many companies’ long-term survival, he asserts, is a common mindset that guides their business strategy. His argument draws from game theory, specifically Professor James P Carse’s concepts of infinite and finite games. Football, with its fixed rules, agreed upon objective and clear endgame, is an example of the latter. Business, on the other hand, is an archetypal infinite game: players leave and join all the time, rules vary, and there’s no discernible finish line.

Many companies, Mr Sinek argues, are playing the infinite game of business with a finite mindset: they think only about crushing their competition and aren’t considering the long-term advancement of a cause. This mistake is what can lead to the premature demise of many businesses. What’s more, in Mr Sinek’s view, it is also the source of most issues within contemporary capitalism, including the unethical pursuit of profit, wild venture capital speculation and even the financial crisis itself.

When it comes to identifying some common traits among dominant, long-lasting businesses, it’s undoubtedly true that one of the practises Mr Sinek identifies, existential flexibility – essentially, a company’s ability to detect game-changing trends and change course accordingly – has proven profitable. Mr Sinek proposes that Mr Steve Jobs’ famous 1979 visit to Xerox, where he recognised the importance of an invention we now call a mouse, is an obvious example of “infinite”, flexible thinking. (Blockbuster clinging to the relevance of video tapes despite the rise of digital media, for instance, would be an example of the opposite.) Amazon’s Mr Jeff Bezos is so wed to this kind of revolutionary mindset, which he terms “Day 1 thinking”, he has motivational principles posted up around Amazon’s headquarters, including in employee bathrooms.

Mr Sinek argues that to play the game infinitely, a company must aim, to paraphrase Google’s now abandoned mission statement, not to be evil. “A company built for the Infinite Game doesn’t think of itself alone,” he writes. “It considers the impact of its decisions on its people, its community, the economy, the country and the world.” Leaders should adhere closely to “just causes”, which should be advanced, among other things, “for the primary benefit of others”; companies must aim to “protect people” and “the environments in which we live.”

Sadly, the issue with this argument is that even a cursory skim of corporate history doesn’t reveal that being good is that closely related to a company’s longevity. According to an investigation by ProPublica and Buzzfeed, Amazon contractors have been involved in more than 60 major road accidents, yet Amazon recently guaranteed one-day delivery across the US. Mr Sinek scolds Facebook and Google for practising gross overreach with our private data, but he doesn’t get into how this “industry standard”, as he puts it, might hinder these companies’ success in the future. After discussing Facebook’s sluggish response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, for instance, he opts for the vague: “Being big and rich does not mean the company can’t fail. Though money certainly helps delay the inevitable in this never-ending game.” While Mr Sinek should be praised for encouraging the idea that acting more ethically will lead to these corporations’ long-term survival… well, history hasn’t so far proven this argument.

The Infinite Game (Portfolio Penguin) by Mr Simon Sinek is out now