Rating:
4/5 cultist board members
Author:
Jim Collins
Amazon Link:
referral program on hold :(
‘Built to Last’, Jim Collins’ 2004 follow up to ‘Good to Great’, is an academic summary of the foundational work carried out at Stanford that lead to Collins’ understanding of what makes good companies ascend to the the level of greatness. ‘Built to Last’ is comprehensive but not exhaustive, it provides the key insights from every stage of Collins’ research and ties up an overall narrative relatively neatly.
The book moves at a pace that keeps interest and drives to the core of questions that greatly benefit from careful evaluation to deliver some keen understandings in an integrated subject area of human psychology and business economics. The book is required reading for anyone who wants to work on business development, long term project management, or wants to understand the history of the various companies discussed over the previous century.
‘Built to Last’ is a text that should be re-read every decade or so, to re-align an understanding of historic predictors of greatness and project them through the ever-evolving modern lens of technology and social movement. The concepts of preserving the core, stimulating progress, and clock building are innately timeless, but they manifest themselves in different ways as our business environments adapt to new technologies, evolving regulation, and the next generation of leadership.
While the book was a joy to read and prompted thoughtful reflection repeatedly throughout the narrative, it does stray from the main path of the investigation at times. If you want the just of what is here, read ‘Good to Great’, and only venture down this rabbit hole if you really care to know the gritty details of the crafting of the Collins’ methodology.