Commodity industries, such as oil and gas, chemicals, metals and mining, and many others, can be described as follows: You have to invest several billions of dollars into your facilities, your market grows slowly and in line with the gross domestic product at best, you can barely differentiate your product, and your sales price and cost structure are highly cyclical. Does this environment sound attractive to you? Managers find these markets frustrating, investors find them difficult, and business school graduates find them boring. Yet, there are several companies that consistently outperform...