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Built to Last

Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials)

By Jerry I. Porras, Jim Collins

(42)

| Paperback | 9780060516406

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Book Description

Provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the twenty-first century and beyond. Softcover.

6 Reviews

Read it actually when it was published and just had to look something up now. Better be sure before I quote something, and I did find the lines I was looking for. When I read about a elite ring of visionary companies, skepticism kicks in. Especially when in cookbook style: anyone can build a visiona ... (continue)

Read it actually when it was published and just had to look something up now. Better be sure before I quote something, and I did find the lines I was looking for. When I read about a elite ring of visionary companies, skepticism kicks in. Especially when in cookbook style: anyone can build a visionary company, do this and that, and things will happen. A more correct title would have been “Build to last, in the US”. And I wonder, like the In Search of Excellence champions, what their status is in a few years.
Ok. I like the hedgehog metaphor. And I seem to share an admiration for Peter Drucker for the authors. Apart from that, I am not a fan of this book.

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Jw. said on Mar 19, 2012 | Add your feedback

Good to Great

“Built to Last” and “Good to Great” are the two-bestselling corporate titles written by Jim Collins. Both books are interrelated, centered on how great-companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into DNA of an enterprise.
I couldn’t agree more on most of t ... (continue)

“Built to Last” and “Good to Great” are the two-bestselling corporate titles written by Jim Collins. Both books are interrelated, centered on how great-companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into DNA of an enterprise.
I couldn’t agree more on most of the contents of the books and indeed, those are the ideals that I uphold at all times to run this company.
Jim Collins emphasizes on fundamental concept a lot, he said, “The world changes – and continues to change at an accelerated pace – but that does not mean that we should abandon the quest for fundamental concepts that stand the rest of the time. On the contrary, we need them more than ever!”
“The biggest problems facing organizations today stem not from a dearth of new management ideas (we’re inundated with them), but primarily from a lack of understanding the basic fundamentals and, most problematic, a failure to consistently apply those fundamentals. Most executives would contribute far more to their organizations by going back to basics rather than flirting off on yet another short lived love affair with the next attractive, well-packaged management skill.”
“Visionary companies distinguish their timeless core values and enduring purpose (which should never change) from the operating practices and business strategies (which should be changing constantly in response to a changing world.”
“They first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are. ”
But irrespective of how great a book is, inevitably it still would have some blind spots.
Jim Collins did not appraise celebrity leaders, and said most of the good-to-great leaders are self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders are paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. I agree on his points, but not completely, because it doesn’t apply to technology companies. For the great technology companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, FaceBook, and etc., their leaders are automatically made celebrities, no matter how they want to stay away from the media, or keep a very low profile life. Or frankly speaking, these great technology companies won’t exist without the invention of these celebrity leaders.
And his definition of good-to-great company is narrow-mindedly based on utilitarian hypothesis, the ratio of Cumulative Stock Returns to General Market, which means the assessment of a company solely relies on the ability to generate maximum profit to the shareholders. This is the biggest flaw of the book.
Because a casino or a tobacco company can easily score high according to Collins’s definition, even when they do more harm than good to society. And I don’t see any great loss to the civilization of mankind if some great companies like Coca Cola did not exist. And shouldn’t we consider the not-so-successful company built by the great inventor and scientist, Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) should be greater than those who are given high ROI (Return On Investment) but with products that provide very little value “built-to-last” companies?
Due to the fact that he keeps ignoring social responsibility, when his third bestseller, “How The Mighty Fall” was introduced during the economic crisis in 2009, I lost the appetite to own a copy.

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郑云城 Teh Hon Seng said on Jun 24, 2010 | Add your feedback

The author is trying to distinguish why some great companies can only substain when the founders was running the company, and why some other great companies can last for hundred of years.
The secrete is, some founders institutionalised their spirits and believe into the company's system. In th ... (continue)

The author is trying to distinguish why some great companies can only substain when the founders was running the company, and why some other great companies can last for hundred of years.
The secrete is, some founders institutionalised their spirits and believe into the company's system. In this way, the company can substain with these ideas alive. But for those founders failed to do so, the companies loses the edge after the founders left. In the authors' word - to create tangible mechanisms to preserve the core and stimulate progress. By -
1. BigHairy Audacious Goal
2. Cult-like culture
3. Try a lot of stuff and keep what works
4. Home-grown Management
5 Good enough Never is

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Samsara said on Nov 7, 2009 | Add your feedback

Section 3[return]Entrepreneurship

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Jonaschau said on Jul 18, 2009 | Add your feedback

This is the book that started it all. . .

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Goateed Individual said on Nov 7, 2008 | Add your feedback

One of the best business book

I love to quote from it. And some of the "new" and "cool" things done by Google are well described in this book and had been done by 3M for years. For example the spending 20% of an engineer's time on the engineer's own project is really old news as 3M had it set at 15% for years and years before Go ... (continue)

I love to quote from it. And some of the "new" and "cool" things done by Google are well described in this book and had been done by 3M for years. For example the spending 20% of an engineer's time on the engineer's own project is really old news as 3M had it set at 15% for years and years before Google.
Good book. Just love it.

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Kempton said on Jun 20, 2007 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback