Many companies that stray too far from their core business fail. So how is it that General Electric, a major electrical manufacturing company, ended up as one of the top U.S. chemical producers--with 1998 sales of $6.6 billion? In Unlikely Victory, Jerome T. Coe, a retired 40-year career employee with General Electric, who spent more than 20 years as a manager of the company's chemical businesses, suggests that it was a combination of necessity, forward-thinking of the engineers, and managers wise enough to give them breathing room. -Much of what they did (then) was counter to the prevailing...