Review by Choice Review
This sequel to Collins and Jerry Porras's Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (3rd ed., 2000) is the result of a five-year, team-based research effort that examined the critical factors that distinguish good companies from truly great companies. Employing a rigorous, multifaceted methodology, the author identified 11 companies that follow a basic pattern: 15-year cumulative stock returns at or below the general stock market, punctuated by a transition point, then cumulative returns at least three times the market over the next 15 years. Based on his extensive research, Collins presents a three factor, six-element model to identify characteristic traits of the truly great companies: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. He addresses a seventh notion--the flywheel--as the overarching factor that catapults a company from just good to truly great. The author concludes by comparing and analyzing the concepts in Built to Last with those presented in this current volume. Extensive appendixes and notes provide supplemental documentation supporting Collins's research-based thesis. Faculty and upper-division undergraduate and graduate students will find this work a useful adjunct to business strategy courses. M. J. Safferstone Mary Washington College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Collins is coauthor of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (1994), the widely heralded book that was the result of a six-year research project conducted by Collins and Jerry Porras. They identified 18 companies that met their rigorous standard for long-term performance. They looked for companies that had outperformed the stock market by a factor of 15 starting from 1926. Then they went about the task of identifying what these companies had in common. Now Collins turns his attention to companies that have made the transition from "good to great." This time the findings are backed by five years of research and data analysis. Starting with every company that ever appeared in the Fortune 500, Collins identifies 11 companies that had 15-year cumulative stock returns at or below the general stock market when, after a transition point, they then demonstrated cumulative returns of at least three times the market over the next 15 years. Collins then looked for similarities among the companies. What he found would both surprise and fascinate anyone involved in management. --David Rouse
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In what Collins terms a prequel to the bestseller Built to Last he wrote with Jerry Porras, this worthwhile effort explores the way good organizations can be turned into ones that produce great, sustained results. To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team (at his management research firm) read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. That Collins is able to distill the findings into a cogent, well-argued and instructive guide is a testament to his writing skills. After establishing a definition of a good-to-great transition that involves a 10-year fallow period followed by 15 years of increased profits, Collins's crew combed through every company that has made the Fortune 500 (approximately 1,400) and found 11 that met their criteria, including Walgreens, Kimberly Clark and Circuit City. At the heart of the findings about these companies' stellar successes is what Collins calls the Hedgehog Concept, a product or service that leads a company to outshine all worldwide competitors, that drives a company's economic engine and that a company is passionate about. While the companies that achieved greatness were all in different industries, each engaged in versions of Collins's strategies. While some of the overall findings are counterintuitive (e.g., the most effective leaders are humble and strong-willed rather than outgoing), many of Collins's perspectives on running a business are amazingly simple and commonsense. This is not to suggest, however, that executives at all levels wouldn't benefit from reading this book; after all, only 11 companies managed to figure out how to change their B grade to an A on their own. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
