When it comes to management challenges, fish fingers and circuses are at opposite extremes: one product is the acme of industrialised food processing, the other the ultimate expression of human creativity and energy. Somehow, private equity has found room for both: last week, Permira agreed to sell Iglo, which makes Birds Eye fish fingers in Europe, after nine years running the frozen foods company, while another buyout group, TPG Capital, led a deal to gain control of Montreal’s Cirque du Soleil.

The coincidence made me wonder at the sheer breadth of private equity-owned businesses, which seems to defy the caricature of buyout kings as asset-stripping short-termists, interested only in targets with an annuity-like stream of revenue. But something else links these two apparently disparate businesses. All great enterprises start like a troupe of inventive and inspired circus performers. But over time most end up churning out the equivalent of pre-cut breaded strips of reconstituted seafood. The big question is: how can entrepreneurial and inventive companies slow their slippery slide to a fish-fingery fate?