Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras

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This is not a book about charismatic visionary leaders. It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary products or visionary market insights. Nor even is it about just having a corporate vision. This is a book about something far more important, enduring, and substantial. This is a book about visionary companies.

So write James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras in this groundbreaking book that shatters myths, provides new insights, and gives practical guidance to those who would like to build landmark companies that stand the test of time. Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies -- they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 -- and studied each company in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from other companies?" By answering such questions, Collins and Porras go beyond the incessant barrage of management buzzwords and fads of the day to discover timeless qualities that have consistently distinguished outstanding companies. They also provide inspiration to all executives and entrepreneurs by destroying the false but widely accepted idea that only charismatic visionary leaders can build visionary companies.

Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the twenty-first century and beyond.

What makes a visionary company? This book, written by a team from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, compares what the authors have identified as "visionary" companies with selected companies in the same industry.

The authors juxtapose Disney and Columbia Pictures, Ford and General Motors, Motorola and Zenith, and Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments, to name a few. The visionary companies, the authors found out, had a number of common characteristics; for instance, almost all had some type of core ideology that guided the company in times of upheaval and served as a constant bench mark. Not all the visionary companies were founded by visionary leaders, however.


Reviews

On the whole, this is an intriguing book that occasionally provides rare and interesting glimpses into the inner workings and philosophical foundations of successful businesses. Recommended for all libraries.

—Randy L. Abbott, University of Evansville Library, Indiana

James C. Collins operates a management education and consulting practice based in Palo Alto, California. He is the co-author of Beyond Entrepreneurship and a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, whose faculty he joined in 1988. Previously he held positions at McKinsey Company and Hewlett-Packard.

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction to the Paperback Edition
	Preface
Chapter 1	The Best of the Best
Chapter 2	Clock Building, Not Time Telling
Interlude	No "Tyranny of the OR"
Chapter 3	More Than Profits
Chapter 4	Preserve the Core/Stimulate Progress
Chapter 5	Big Hairy Audacious Goals
Chapter 6	Cult-Like Cultures
Chapter 7	Try a Lot of Stuff and Keep What Works
Chapter 8	Home-Grown Management
Chapter 9	Good Enough Never Is
Chapter 10	The End of the Beginning
Chapter 11	Building the Vision
Epilogue	Frequently Asked Questions
	Appendix 1: Research Issues
	Appendix 2: Founding Roots of Visionary Companies and Comparison Companies
	Appendix 3: Tables
	Appendix 4: Chapter Notes
	Index

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