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    Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
    Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
    Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

    Written by Jim Collins

    Narrated by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras

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    About this audiobook

    Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies and studied each in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: ""What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the comparison companies and what were the common practices these enduringly great companies followed throughout their history?""

    Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 28, 2008
    ISBN9780062346728
    Author

    Jim Collins

    Jim Collins is a student and teacher of what makes great companies tick, and a Socratic advisor to leaders in the business and social sectors. Having invested more than a quarter-century in rigorous research, he has authored or coauthored six books that have sold in total more than 10 million copies worldwide. They include Good to Great, Built to Last, How the Mighty Fall, and Great by Choice. Driven by a relentless curiosity, Jim began his research and teaching career on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. In addition to his work in the business sector, Jim has a passion for learning and teaching in the social sectors, including education, healthcare, government, faith-based organizations, social ventures, and cause-driven nonprofits. In 2012 and 2013, he had the honor to serve a two-year appointment as the Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point. In 2017, Forbes selected Jim as one of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds. Jim has been an avid rock climber for more than forty years and has completed single-day ascents of El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite Valley. Learn more about Jim and his concepts at his website, where you’ll find articles, videos, and useful tools. jimcollins.com

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    Reviews for Built to Last

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    • 1/5
      I don't know if there is the streaming or anything else, but the voice is barely audible.
    • 3/5
      A rather mediocre book. It made some good points, but I was not sold on the comparison of the visionary companies vs not so visionary companies. Overall 3/5.
    • 5/5
      An eye opening read into the world of enduring entrepreneurial spirit that enables an organizations to weather whatever they come up against.
    • 5/5
      A study of 18 pairs of companies in different product spaces, one of each pair very successful and the other not so much (as judged by returns to stock up to 1990). They find that many assumptions about what makes a company great in the long term are just 'myths'; they list 12 such popular (mis)conceptions, e.g. a charismatic leader is required (not so!), or there has to be constant churn (not really!). Great read if you are suddenly lnded with a senior role in any concern.
    • 4/5
      Some pretty decent observations and perceptions, but otherwise a bit subjective when it came to companies being used as examples. That being said, that accusation could rightly be leveled at tons of books, so I'm not sure how fair that is. Still, recommended and a fairly solid effort.
    • 5/5
      A well written, thoroughly researched, and actionable book on how to build great companies. A must read for any founder, CEO, or manager.

      Some fun quotes:

      Visionary companies distinguish their timeless core values and enduring purpose (which should never change) from their operating practices and business strategies (which should be changing constantly in response to a changing world).

      Gone forever—at least in our eyes—is the debilitating perspective that the trajectory of a company depends on whether it is led by people ordained with rare and mysterious qualities that cannot be learned by others.

      Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is “time telling”; building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building.

      The builders of visionary companies tend to be clock builders, not time tellers. They concentrate primarily on building an organization—building a ticking clock—rather than on hitting a market just right with a visionary product idea and riding the growth curve of an attractive product life cycle. And instead of concentrating on acquiring the individual personality traits of visionary leadership, they take an architectural approach and concentrate on building the organizational traits of visionary companies. The primary output of their efforts is not the tangible implementation of a great idea, the expression of a charismatic personality, the gratification of their ego, or the accumulation of personal wealth. Their greatest creation is the company itself and what it stands for.

      Thus, early in our project, we had to reject the great idea or brilliant strategy explanation of corporate success and consider a new view. We had to put on a different lens and look at the world backward. We had to shift from seeing the company as a vehicle for the products to seeing the products as a vehicle for the company.

      If you equate the success of your company with success of a specific idea—as many businesspeople do—then you’re more likely to give up on the company if that idea fails; and if that idea happens to succeed, you’re more likely to have an emotional love affair with that idea and stick with it too long, when the company should be moving vigorously on to other things. But if you see the ultimate creation as the company, not the execution of a specific idea or capitalizing on a timely market opportunity, then you can persist beyond any specific idea—good or bad—and move toward becoming an enduring great institution.

      We suggest that the continual stream of great products and services from highly visionary companies stems from them being outstanding or organizations, not the other way around.

      Profitability is a necessary condition for existence and a means to more important ends, but it is not the end in itself for many of the visionary companies. Profit is like oxygen, food, water, and blood for the body; they are not the point of life, but without them, there is no life.

      In examining the history of the visionary companies, we were struck by how often they made some of their best moves not by detailed strategic planning, but rather by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and—quite literally—accident. What looks in hindsight like a brilliant strategy was often the residual result of opportunistic experimentation and "purposeful accidents."

      It might be far more satisfactory to look at well-adapted visionary companies not primarily as the result of brilliant foresight and strategic planning, but largely as consequences of a basic process—namely, try a lot of experiments, seize opportunities, keep those that work well (consistent with the core ideology), and fix or discard those that don’t.

      Maximize shareholder wealth” is the standard “off-the-shelf” purpose for those organizations that have not yet identified their true core purpose. It is a substitute ideology, and a weak substitute at that.

      When a Boeing engineer talks about launching an exciting and revolutionary 777 aircraft she doesn’t say, “I put my heart and soul into this project because it would add 37 cents to our earnings per share.”

      If you woke up tomorrow morning with enough money in the bank that you would never need to work again, how could we frame the purpose of this organization such that you would want to continue working anyway? What deeper sense of purpose would motivate you to continue to dedicate your precious creative energies to this company’s efforts?

      It’s not what you believe that sets you apart so much as that you believe in something, that you believe in it deeply, that you preserve it over time, and that you bring it to life with consistent alignment.

      You cannot “install” new core values or purpose into people. Core values and purpose are not something people “buy in” to. People must already have a predisposition to holding them.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful book. Preserve your organization's core ideology, but stimulate change relentlessly.
    • 2/5
      I'd be astonished if this weren't someone's dissertation.
    • 5/5
      "Uhrmacher, nicht Zeitansager"Das Buch ist die Zusammenfassung einer Studie der Autoren, die 18 Amerikanische Unternehmen mit hoher Performance (Aktienrendite über viele Jahre) mit 18 etwa gleich alten durchschnittlichen Unternehmen verglichen haben.Das Ziel der Studie war es, die Charakteristika dauerhaft erfolgreicher Unternehmen herauszufinden. Sie zielt also auf den langfristigen Eerfolg und nicht auf Quartalszahlen ab.Es werden,Themen wie Wertvorstellungen, Grundwerte, Mission und Vision, Ziele, Firmenkultur, ... behandelt. Die Kernaussage ist, daß diese Eigenschaften unveränderlich sind, während der Rest der Firmenegenschaften (Produkte, Markt, ...) zur Diskussion gestellt und geändert werden kann.Die Unternehmen aus der Studie werden zusammen mit ihren Vergleichsunternehmen über ihre ganze Firmengeschichte hinweg analysiert.Man könnte sagen, daß einige dieser Firmen heute nicht mehr erfolgreich sind, müßte dann allerdings auch die weitere "innere" Entwicklung dieser Firmen betrachten. Einige dieser Unternehmen haben sich heute der Kurzfristigkeit des heutigen Geschäftslebens und dem quartalsmäßigen Zahlenspiel unterworfen. Dies macht eine langfristige Entwicklung schwierig, wenn nicht gar unmöglich. Eine Fortsetzung der Studie mit den gleichen Unternehmen wäre sicherlich interessant.Die zweite Auflage enthält zusätzlich einen Abdruck des Artikels "Building your company's vision" aus der Harvard Business Review vom Sep-Okt 1996
    • 4/5
      Very well written and compelling. One of my favorites. There is tremendous credibility with a well documented research study. I hold this book in the same regard as Leading the Revolution by Gary Hamel. The 12 myths about companies are great. Very basic and easy to internalize about your business. You will learn the characteristic of visionary companies. A must read for any CEO or business person.
    • 4/5
      This is on the reading list I have of best all-time business books. It's thoughtful but not on par with "In Search of Excellence" or Collin's more recent "Good to Great." Their approach is valid for picking up a list of excellent performers and comparison firms that had the same opportunity. I'm not sure these firms will continue to last (Wal-Mart is already faltering), but the authors point out it's a matter of continuing the habits. Regarding the "genius of And" I've observed that certain leaders assume this means they should try to have it all. One former co-CEO of my current firm often spoke about and did this. There is some genius in going down one path or another. Their 5 methods are: 1. Big, Hairy Audacious Goals, 2. Cult-like Cultures, 3. Try a Lot of Stuff and Keep What Works, 4. Home-Grown Management, 5. Good Enough Never Is. Other important points: the value of trying things (bias for action and appreciating the value of failures). Quoting Richard Carlton of 3M: "We must possess a two-fisted generating and testing [process] for ideas... Every idea evolved should have a chance to prove its worth, and this true for two reasons: 1) if it is good, we want it; 2) if it is not good, we will have purchased our insurance and peace of mind when we have proved it impractical."
    • 4/5
      An innovative business book. Collins - a business school professor - decided to do an experiment using the scientific method to identify using stock performance companies that were majorly outperforming peers, then comparing them to sister companies or competitors who were performing on par with the market. From that comparison, Collins identified-through extensive, exhaustive research and interviews-the differences in the company pairings. Regardless of the findings, the model of approach and study is worth reading the book. However, the findings are very intriguing and definitely unexpected. Compelling.
    • 3/5
      Did not quite complete this book - I guess after reading good to great, this book is like a repeat of the same (though it came first). But this book, I will give credit for some other powerful concepts such as the BHAG.