Built to Last identifies 18 "visionary" companies and sets out to determine what's special about them. To get on the list, a company had to be world famous, have a stellar brand image, and be at least 50 years old. We're talking about companies that even a layperson knows to be, well, different: the Disneys, the Wal-Marts, the Mercks.

Whatever the key to the success of these companies, the key to the success of this book is that the authors don't waste time comparing them to business failures. Instead, they use a control group of "successful-but-second-rank" companies to highlight what's special about their 18 "visionary" picks. Thus Disney is compared to Columbia Pictures, Ford to GM, Hewlett Packard to Texas Instruments, and so on.

The core myth, according to the authors, is that visionary companies must start with a great product and be pushed into the future by charismatic leaders. There are examples of that pattern, they admit: Johnson & Johnson, for one. But there are also just too many counterexamples--in fact, the majority of the "visionary" companies, including giants like 3M, Sony, and TI, don't fit the model. They were characterized by total lack of an initial business plan or key idea and by remarkably self-effacing leaders. Collins and Porras are much more impressed with something else they shared: an almost cult-like devotion to a "core ideology" or identity, and active indoctrination of employees into "ideologically commitment" to the company.

The comparison with the business "B"-team does tend to raise a significant methodological problem: which companies are to be counted as "visionary" in the first place? There's an air of circularity here, as if you achieve "visionary" status by ... achieving visionary status. So many roads lead to Rome that the book is less practical than it might appear. But that's exactly the point of an eloquent chapter on 3M. This wildly successful company had no master plan, little structure, and no prima donnas. Instead it had an atmosphere in which bright people were both keen to see the company succeed and unafraid to "try a lot of stuff and keep what works." --Richard Farr

Product Description

"This is not a book about charismatic visionary leaders. It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary products or visionary market insights. Nor is it about just having a corporate vision. This is a book about something far more important, enduring, and substantial. This is a book about visionary companies." So write Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in this groundbreaking book that shatters myths, provides new insights, and gives practical guidance to those who would like to build landmark companies that stand the test of time.

Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies -- they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 -- and studied each company 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 other companies?"

What separates General Electric, 3M, Merck, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, Walt Disney, and Philip Morris from their rivals? How, for example, did Procter & Gamble, which began life substantially behind rival Colgate, eventually prevail as the premier institution in its industry? How was Motorola able to move from a humble battery repair business into integrated circuits and cellular communications, while Zenith never became dominant in anything other than TVs? How did Boeing unseat McDonnell Douglas as the world's best commercial aircraft company -- what did Boeing have that McDonnell Douglas lacked?

By answering such questions, Collins and Porras go beyond the incessant barrage of management buzzwords and fads of the day to discover timeless qualities that have consistently distinguished out-standing companies. They also provide inspiration to all executives and entrepreneurs by destroying the false but widely accepted idea that only charismatic visionary leaders can build visionary companies.

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 twenty-first century and beyond.

Here is a look at each of the twelve myths and a sound byte describing each:

1. It takes a great idea to start a company Few visionary companies started with a great idea. Many companies started without any specific ideas (HP and Sony) and others were outright failures (3M). In fact a great idea may lead to road of not being able to adapt.

2. Visionary companies require great and charismatic visionary leaders A charismatic leader in not required and, in fact, can be detrimental to a company's long-term prospects.

3. The most successful companies exist first and foremost to maximize profits Not true. Profit counts, but is usually not at the top of the list.

4. Visionary companies share a common subset of "correct" core values They all have core values, but each is unique to a company and it's culture.

5. The only constant is change The core values can and often do last more then 100 years.

6. Blue-chip companies play it safe They take significant bet the company risks.

7. Visionary companies are great places to work, for everyone These companies are only great places to work if you fit the vision and culture.

8. Highly successful companies make some of their best moves by brilliant and complex strategic planning. They actually try a bunch of stuff and keep what works.

9. Companies should hire outside CEOs to stimulate fundamental change Most have had their change agents come from within the system.

10. The most successful companies focus primarily on beating the competition. They focus on beating themselves.

11. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Decisions don't have to either or, but can be boths.

12. Companies become visionary primarily through "vision statements". Vision is not a statement it is the way you do business.

I would recommend this book to anyone engaged in developing and running a business at any level. If you want to design, build and run a lasting enterprise this book has some ideas and insights worth exploring.


Unprecedented, Compelling, Well-Researched   July 28, 1997
 121 out of 197 found this review helpful

"Built to Last" is one of those rare non-fiction books you just can't put down. Unequivocally the best "business" book I have ever read, "Built to Last" by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras is a compelling, thorough, well-written, unprecedented look at what it takes to "create and achieve long-lasting greatness as a visionary corporation." Unlike many current "trendy" management and "business success" books out on the market, Collins and Porras differentiate "Built to Last" by using their own six-year comprehensive, well-documented research study as the basis for further analysis.

What separates "Built to Last" is that each visionary company (3M, HP, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart...) is contrasted with a comparison company founded in the same time, in the same industry, with similar founding products and markets (Norton, TI, Colgate, Ames...). Perhaps what I found most intriguing were some of the twelve "shattered myths" they go on to counter throughout the book:

1. It takes a great idea to start a great company
2. Visionary companies require great and charismatic visionary leaders
3. Visionary companies share a common subset of "correct" core values
4. Highly successful companies make their best moves by brilliant and complex strategic planning
5. The most successful companies focus primarily on beating the competition

As a current business student with a summer internship in a "visionary company," I was amazed as their careful analysis rang true. This is one book I can highly recommend to any student, professional, or business educator looking for those not-so-subtle traits that characterize a truly visionary company.

Read this along with Good To Great   March 13, 2004
 30 out of 31 found this review helpful

This book will show you how to take your business from just average to great but even more importantly, make it last. Built to Last is a must read for all business people. Read this right along with Good To Great and Double Digit Growth.

Take your company to unequaled growth and leave a legacy.


Some good stuff, but mostly hack work   January 1, 2000
 25 out of 98 found this review helpful

I found the one chapter in the book on Cults and Culture to be compelling, but overall this was an unbelievably boring and repetitive work, with little or no substantive research on the control groups used to compare visionary and non-visionary companies. I think I got their point of clock building, not time telling the first time they used the metaphor. I found myself getting extremely frustrated with the repetitive reference to simple observations through out their study: Preserve the core, stimulate progress, blah, blah, blah...

A MUCH better book on which type of companies will succeed in the new age of the service based economy is The Profit Zone. It takes many of the same companies mentioned in Built to Last and does much better job of describing why some succeed and some fail. The chapter on GE is especially illuminating. The Profit Zone is a methodology based book; Built to Last is more of an excercise in aphorisms with the exception of one remarkable chapter on organizational cultures (chapter six, Cult-Like Cultures). I guess having one original observation is a BHAG for just about any business book.


A huge business hit of the early 90s that has aged pretty well   September 11, 2006
 17 out of 17 found this review helpful

This is one of the business classics in the past twenty years. It has sold a huge number of copies and I am sure many of those purchased copies were actually read! As impressive as its sales numbers have been, the way it has affected the approach to the way business was discussed and talked about for the past dozen years has been even more impressive.

Yes, there are always newer fads and business is subject to fads more than most fields of human endeavor. There are lots of theories about why this is so, but it might have something to do with the new managers coming in wanting to bring something new with them and so the previous guy's stuff is no good. Hence, something comes and something goes for reasons beyond its ability to run business in a sound and profitable way. However, when something comes along with some real substance it spreads and lasts, at least for awhile. The ideas of core values and big (hairy audacious) goals hit a chord and lasted. Of course, today they are part of the air businesspeople breathe rather than a quote from this book.

The authors looked at a number of big companies and found a list of those that had been around a long time, been financially successful, and were on a roll at the time of this book (but they don't say this is one of their criteria). They also found some comparable big company that hadn't found the level of success of the "visionary company" as they call the successful firms. They then looked for some traits common to those big successful companies that might explain their success.

The four big principles they came up with were: 1) Be a clock builder - or architect - not a time teller [once you read the chapter it will be clear], 2) Embrace the genius of the AND, 3) Preserve the core / stimulate progress, and 4) seek consistent alignment.

All this has to do with being opportunistic, building the organization that best supports the opportunities you are pursuing rather than letting the organization dictate what you pursue, that success requires doing seemingly contradictory goals simultaneously, making sure that the core culture gets preserved (if it has been a successful culture), and making sure that the whole process is focused on the core ideology - the core values and core purpose of the organization. Sounds simple? It's not. And even so, the "visionary" companies the book lauded a dozen years ago have all, or almost all, fallen on various levels of hard times since the book came out.

This fact is addressed in a soft way in the frequently asked questions addition for this paperback addition. There is also a new last chapter on building the vision and a section on questions for research (this acknowledges areas left unexplained by the book).

A book that has been this influential deserves your attention if you are interested in business literature. However, as with all of these books, use the principles as they apply to your real life in the real world of competitive business rather than treating them as some kind of final truth.