January 18, 2005Good to GreatAnother week, another book review. I've finished reading Jim Collins's Good to Great, about how good companies transform themselves into great ones. Collins also wrote Built to Last, a study of the great companies, some almost 200 years old. The later book isn't concerned with great companies as such, but how companies were able to overcome the inertia of being good enough, and move on to being great. Given that the thing has been on the business best-seller list since the Nixon Administration, it hardly needs another review to pump up sales. The thing about Collins's studies that distinguishes them from b-school case studies is their time scope. Usually, a b-school study will look at a decision point or a problem, and ask the student to develop and defend a solution. At the end, the professor tells the class what happened, but even cases with strategic scope usually only focus on one aspect: alliances, say, or positioning. While a typical case study might follow an industry for half a decade, Collins's work traces a company's success or failure over 30 years. And since he thinks institutionally, rather than financially, his results seem applicable to all sorts of organizations and even individuals. For people who like big ideas (cough, Jared, cough), this is a terrific read. Posted by joshuasharf at January 18, 2005 07:39 AM | TrackBack |
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