In the late 1990s, researchers analyzed what distinguishes great companies from simply good ones. They found several features that are typical for great companies. Interestingly, most of these features seem counter-intuitive. In this paper, we show, on the qualitative level, that from the algorithmic viewpoint, many of these features make perfect sense. Some of the resulting explanations are simple and straightforward, other explanations rely on complex not-well-publicized results from theoretical computer science.