Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

A central myth, according to the authors, is that visionary companies start with a great product and are pushed into the future by charismatic leaders. Usually false, Collins and Porras find. Much more important, and a much more telling line of demarcation between a wild success like 3M and an also-ran like Norton, is flexibility. 3M had no master plan, little structure, and no prima donnas. Instead it had an atmosphere in which bright people were not afraid to "try a lot of stuff and keep what works."

If you listen to this audiocassette on your daily commute, you may discover whether you are headed to a "visionary" place of work--and, if so, whether you are the kind of employee who fits your employer's vision. (Running time: two hours, two cassettes) --Richard Farr

Product Description

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.

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 136 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
29 out of 29 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.


A Great Book with a Flaw   January 31, 2005
Walter H. Bock (Greensboro NC)
20 out of 21 found this review helpful

This book reminds me of the hero in the classic Greek tragedy. The hero is always magnificent, but has a tragic flaw. This is a magnificent book with a tragic flaw.

Porras and Collins set out to write a book about visionary companies, and they did just that. They chose the companies they would study based on specific, detailed criteria.

They wanted to study companies that had been premier institutions in their industries and widely admired while they made an imprint on the world around them. They wanted their companies to have multiple generations of chief executives and to have gone through multiple product or service lifecycles. And they wanted the companies to have been around for a long time - founded before 1950.

They compared each of their visionary companies with another company that was not a premier visionary company. Many of the comparison companies were solid performers. They were good companies, but not great companies. That's one of the great things about the book. You can see the distinction between good performance and great performance.

Another thing that makes the book great is the extensive research. The project took six years, and the authors and their research team dug into critical issues and came up with fascinating insights and comparisons.

Read this book and you will learn about the characteristics of great companies that have an impact on the world around them. The discussions will enrich your understanding of what makes a great company. This will be especially valuable to you if you're in the process of building a company that you want to be great.

That's the great part, the hero part. What about the flaws?

The first flaw is that essentially performance for each of these companies is equated with market performance. There are lots of things the authors could have used, such as return on assets, for example. But share price is easy to track over time and is used as a surrogate for greatness. I'm not sure that that's the best criterion.

What you are actually reading about is a selection of excellent, visionary companies that were perceived as good investments by the market. This "perception" issue is not addressed in the book.

The second flaw is more important. While this book tells you marvelous things about companies that are admittedly great and about some of the things that make for greatness in companies, and while it mixes statistical data with telling anecdotes, it falls short in one critical area. The book doesn't tell you anything about how to achieve greatness.

In other words, it describes what greatness might be and it gives you some examples of companies who have achieved it, but the book ultimately left me with the nagging desire that the authors would have given me some "how to." As far as you can tell from reading the book, these companies were always great.

That may not be a problem for you if you're just starting a company. You've got a clean slate to start from. But if you're guiding an already-established company, or a part of it, I think you'll wish for a few examples of companies that became great after performing at some lesser level.

That's the bottom line in my recommendation. If you're looking for a book that describes greatness and where you'll pick up a wealth of ideas and good historical knowledge about great companies, buy this book. If, on the other hand, what you want is a book that describes in some detail how to achieve that greatness, this may not be the book for you.



New insights on growth for people and organizations   January 3, 2000
James L. Grubb (Scottsdale, AZ)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

If you invested in a general market stock fund, or a comparison company, and a visionary company January 1, 1926 and reinvested dividends, a $1 in the general market fund would have grown to $415; not bad. Your $1 investment in the comparison companies would have grown to $955 (twice the general market). But your investment in the visionary companies would have grown to $6,356, six times greater than comparison companies and fifteen times greater than the general market.

The "visionary" companies: 3M, American Express, Boeing, Citicorp, Ford, GE, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Marriott, Merck, Motorola, Nordstrom, Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, Sony, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney.

Enduring companies grow because they concentrate on being a great organization, not because of an original idea for a product or service. A lasting, core ideology is the driving force behind a visionary company; not culture, strategy, tactics, operations or policies. Core values are simple, clear, straightforward beliefs of unchanging, fundamental values such as The Golden Rule, but core values differ widely. They are the basic reason for existence beyond just making money. Visionary companies concentrate on building an organization rather than implementation of a great idea, charis-matic leadership, or wealth accumulation. The authors call it "clock-building" rather than "time-telling."

Growth favors the persistent but persist in what? They never give up on the company, but drop losing ideas, adopt winning ideas and along the way, try many ideas to find winners. But it's the company, not the idea. Most revealing was the extraordinary fact that visionary companies can live with contradictory ideas and forces at the same time. They don't accept an A or B concept, for example, that there must be either stability or change. They do both at the same time, all the time.

This is a rare, difficult trait. The book aptly quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald: "...first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas... at the same time.. . and still function."

The profit myth. Visionary companies are more idealogically-drlven and less profit-driven than comparison companies. Of course they pursue profit, but they do both. More importantly, their values don't shift with the times, or changing markets.

As the authors reel off the rather obscure names of heads of visionary companies (and their personality traits), clearly they aren't charismatic leaders, but perhaps better described as "architects." People have always harbored a deep need to be assured that someone or something must have it all figured out; God must have made it that way. Not so with visionary companies. Things are the way they are because the founders created an evolving, changing process for selecting what works and doesn't work. And these visionary companies continue to come up with a stream of successful products and services.

Other shattered myths. Playing it safe: They make bold, risky commitments and make them work most of the time. A great place to work: You fit and flourish or hate it and leave. Brilliant strategic planning; Best moves are made by trial and error. Beating competition: They concentrate on beating themselves. They believe in home-grown management; promotion from within. The authors conclude that new ideas will become obsolete faster than ever before, therefore corporate success must be ideological and provide common bonds of values, beliefs and aspirations.

This is a landmark book. It goes beyond corporate concepts and provides new insights on growth for individuals, groups or organizations.