Citing such corporations as Disney, Merck, and General Electric, a study of the reasons behind their market leadership identifies each company's BHAGs--Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals--to challenge today's beliefs about long-term success. Reprint. $75,000 ad/promo. Tour. This analysis of what makes great companies great has been hailed everywhere as an instant classic and one of the best business titles since In Search of Excellence . The authors, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, spent six years in research, and they freely admit that their own preconceptions about business success were devastated by their actual findings--along with the preconceptions of virtually everyone else. 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 " Built to Last ...is one of the most eye-opening business studies since In Search of Excellence -- -- Kevin Maney, USA Today "A 'must read' for any CEO who aspires to create a great company." -- -- T.J. Rodgers, President and CEO, Cypress Semiconductor Corp. James C. Collins operates a management education and consulting practice based in Palo Alto, California. He is the co-author of Beyond Entrepreneurship and a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, whose faculty he joined in 1988. Previously he held positions at McKinsey Company and Hewlett-Packard. Built to Last Successful Habits of Visionary Companies By James C. Collins HarperBusiness Copyright © 1994 James C. Collins All right reserved. ISBN: 9780887307393 Chapter One This is not a book about charismatic visionary leaders. It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary market insights. Nor even 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. What is a visionary company? Visionary companies are premier institutions -- the crown jewels -- in their industries, widely admired by their peers and having a long track record of making a significant impact on the world around them. The key point is that a visionary company is an organization -- an institution. All individual leaders, no matter how charismatic or visionary, eventually die; and all visionary products and services -- all "great ideas" -- eventually become obsolete. Indeed, entire markets can become obsolete and disappear. Yet visionary companies prosper over long periods of time, through multiple product life cycles and multiple generations of active leaders. Pause for a moment and compose your own mental list of visionary companies; try to think of five to ten organizations that meet the following criteria: Premier institution in its industry - Widely admired by knowledgeable businesspeople - Made an indelible imprint on the world in which we live - Had multiple generations of c