(2001) Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap. and Others Don't. By Jim Collins. (ISBN: 0066620996 / 0-06-662099-6)

Book Description: Harper Business, New York, New York, U.S.A., 2001. Stated First Edition, number line on copyright page reads (05 06 07 08 RRD 80 79 78 77 76 75 74 73 72). Red Hard Cover Boards, Black Spine With Silver Text. 300 pages, 6.5" x 9.5" tall, 1" thick. New copy. Never read. Not price clipped. Beautiful copy of book and dust jacket. COLLECTOR'S COPY.

Book Condition: Brand New.

Dust Jacket Condition: Brand New. NON price-clipped DJ [$27.50 US].

About This Book: One of the top ten business books of 2001 Brand NEW unread book. Hard cover bound book.

Synopsis:

The Challenge:
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study:
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards:
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons:
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings:
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

• Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
• The Hedgehog Concept: (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
• A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
• The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Review: Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, Can a good company become a great company and if so, how? In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. --Harry C. Edwards.

About The Author: James C. "Jim" Collins, III (born 1958, Boulder, Colorado) is an American business consultant, author, and lecturer on the subject of company sustainability and growth. Jim Collins frequently contributes to Harvard Business Review, Business Week, Fortune and other magazines, journals, etc. He is also the author of several books: How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, and Good to Great.

Career: Collins began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, where he now conducts research and teaches executives from the corporate and social sectors. During that time, Collins has served as a senior executive at CNN International, and also worked with social sector organizations, such as: Johns Hopkins Medical School, the Girl Scouts of the USA, the Leadership Network of Churches, the American Association of K-12 School Superintendents, and the United States Marine Corps.

Writings: Jim has authored or co-authored five books based on his research, including the classic Built to Last, a fixture on the Business Week best-seller list for more than six years, and has been translated into 25 languages. The most recent book is How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In. Good to Great, his previous book, is "about the factors common to those few companies ... to sustain remarkable success for a substantial period," attained long-running positions on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week best-seller lists, sold 2.5 million hardcover copies since publication, and has been translated into 32 languages.

Collins often discusses a "Level 5 leader" in his writings. This refers to the peak of a five-tier hierarchy of leadership characteristics presented in the books. A Level 5 Leader is someone who embodies a “paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will.”

Books:

• 1994: Built to Last by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras (Paperback, Hardcover, CD)

• 1995: Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company by James C. Collins and William C. Lazier (Paperback & Hardcover)

• 2001: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t by James C. Collins (Hardcover, CD).

• 2005: Good to Great and the Social Sectors by James C. Collins (Paperback)

• 2009: How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by James C. Collins

• 2011: Great By Choice by James C. Collins and Morten T. Hansen

Family: Jim Collins is married to former triathlete and 1985 Ironman winner, Joanne Ernst.
About his wife, he stated, “We’ve been married 20 years and we have 50–50 ownership ... but she holds all the voting shares.”

Collins re-published an autobiography called Test Pilot (Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1935), written by his grandfather Jimmy Collins, after whom Jim Collins is named. Jimmy Collins was the chief test pilot for the Grumman military aircraft company during the 1930s, and Clark Gable portrayed him in the movie version of his book. Jimmy Collins died in a crash while testing the F3 biplane, having predicted and described his death before it.