false<![CDATA[Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies]]>http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165386366m/4122.jpg412216This analysis of what makes great companies great has been hailed everywhere as an instant classic and one of the best business titles since <I>In Search of Excellence</I>. The authors, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, spent six years in research, and they freely admit that their own preconceptions about business success were devastated by their actual findings--along with the preconceptions of virtually everyone else.<p> <I>Built to Last</I> identifies 18 "visionary" companies and sets out to determine what's special about them. To get on the list, a company had to be world famous, have a stellar brand image, and be at least 50 years old. We're talking about companies that even a layperson knows to be, well, different: the Disneys, the Wal-Marts, the Mercks. <p> Whatever the key to the success of these companies, the key to the success of this book is that the authors don't waste time comparing them to business failures. Instead, they use a control group of "successful-but-second-rank" companies to highlight what's special about their 18 "visionary" picks. Thus Disney is compared to Columbia Pictures, Ford to GM, Hewlett Packard to Texas Instruments, and so on.<p> The core myth, according to the authors, is that visionary companies must start with a great product and be pushed into the future by charismatic leaders. There are examples of that pattern, they admit: Johnson & Johnson, for one. But there are also just too many counterexamples--in fact, the majority of the "visionary" companies, including giants like 3M, Sony, and TI, don't fit the model. They were characterized by total lack of an initial business plan or key idea and by remarkably self-effacing leaders. Collins and Porras are much more impressed with something else they shared: an almost cult-like devotion to a "core ideology" or identity, and active indoctrination of employees into "ideologically commitment" to the company. <p> The comparison with the business "B"-team does tend to raise a significant methodological problem: which companies are to be counted as "visionary" in the first place? There's an air of circularity here, as if you achieve "visionary" status by ... achieving visionary status. So many roads lead to Rome that the book is less practical than it might appear. But that's exactly the point of an eloquent chapter on 3M. This wildly successful company had no master plan, little structure, and no prima donnas. Instead it had an atmosphere in which bright people were both keen to see the company succeed and unafraid to "try a lot of stuff and keep what works." <I>--Richard Farr</I> 1479161994Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companiestotal:777|5:193|4:338|3:187|2:49|1:10|777298612556751falsefalseSat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000Sun Jan 06 21:05:05 -0800 2008Sun Jan 06 21:06:27 -0800 2008
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40falsefalseFri Apr 18 00:00:00 -0700 2008Wed Jan 14 14:52:00 -0800 2009Sun Jun 21 19:27:27 -0700 2009Built to Last, the management classic written by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in 1994, takes a crack at answering just that question. The book is a summary of authors’ and their Stanford Graduate School of Business team's six year ...more...]]>
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Built to Last is about the qualities "visionary companies" possess. It compares exemplary companies that have withstood the test of time with their less successful, less resilient counterparts. From reading this book, I learned a lot about what it takes to build and maintain a "vis...more...]]>
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This is a groundbreaking book that tells us how to build landmark companies that stand the test of time. The subject of Collins' and Porras' study was 'What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the other companies?' By answering such questions, Collins and Porras go...more...]]>
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40falsefalseThu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1998Tue Aug 14 21:41:42 -0700 2007Tue Aug 14 22:38:27 -0700 2007
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30falsefalseThu Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006Thu Dec 04 21:14:48 -0800 2008Thu Dec 04 21:15:26 -0800 200830falsefalseMon Feb 04 00:00:00 -0800 2008Sun Feb 03 16:33:24 -0800 2008Mon Feb 04 17:19:46 -0800 2008 Here's one such book, "built to last"...more...]]>
40falsefalseWed Aug 20 07:22:11 -0700 2008Wed Aug 20 07:27:22 -0700 2008 Some things I learned:
1. There are 2 type of companies. Time tellers and Clock builders. Time tellers look only at the present time, and Clock builders build a system that will tell the time for generations.