By Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras

"This isn't a ebook approximately charismatic visionary leaders. it isn't approximately visionary product recommendations or visionary items or visionary industry insights. Nor even is it approximately simply having a company imaginative and prescient. this can be a ebook approximately anything way more very important, enduring, and mammoth. this can be a publication approximately visionary companies." So write James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras during this groundbreaking ebook that shatters myths, presents new insights, and offers sensible assistance to those that wish to construct landmark businesses that stand the try out of time.

Drawing upon a six-year examine venture on the Stanford collage Graduate institution of commercial, Collins and Porras took eighteen actually unparalleled and long-lasting businesses -- they've got a standard age of approximately 100 years and feature outperformed the overall inventory industry by means of an element of fifteen considering that 1926 -- and studied each one corporation in direct comparability to 1 of its most sensible rivals. They tested the firms from their very beginnings to the current day -- as start-ups, as midsize businesses, and as huge organisations. all through, the authors requested: "What makes the really unparalleled businesses assorted from different companies?"

What separates common electrical, 3M, Merck, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, Walt Disney, and Philip Morris from their competitors? How, for instance, did Procter & Gamble, which all started existence considerably at the back of rival Colgate, finally be triumphant because the most appropriate establishment in its undefined? How was once Motorola in a position to circulation from a humble battery fix company into built-in circuits and mobile communications, whereas Zenith by no means turned dominant in whatever except TVs? How did Boeing unseat McDonnell-Douglas because the world's most sensible advertisement airplane corporation -- what did Boeing have that McDonnell-Douglas lacked?

By answering such questions, Collins and Porras transcend the incessant barrage of administration buzzwords and fads of the day to find undying traits that experience constantly special remarkable businesses. additionally they supply suggestion to all executives and marketers by way of destroying the fake yet extensively accredited concept that simply charismatic visionary leaders can construct visionary companies.

Filled with enormous quantities of particular examples and arranged right into a coherent framework of functional strategies that may be utilized by means of managers and marketers in any respect degrees, Built to Last presents a grasp blueprint for development businesses that would prosper lengthy into the twenty-first century and past.