The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

• Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
• The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
• A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
• The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Comment les plus grandes réussites entrepreneuriales ont-elles abouti ? Dans son best-seller De la performance à l'excellence, Jim Collins introduisait la notion de « volant ». Il soulignait alors que ce n’était pas une innovation, ni même un projet grandiose ou un coup de chance qui était à l’origine de la réussite des plus grandes entreprises ou start-up d’aujourd’hui mais bien l’accumulation de nombreuses décisions, prises les unes après les autres, dans une sorte de processus biologique, étape après étape, action après action.

Dans cette monographie, Jim Collins revient sur les étapes indispensables pour savoir créer cet effet volant, accélérer son mouvement et toujours garder le cap dans des marchés en renouvellement permanent. Vous comprendrez sa mise en pratique grâce à de nombreux exemples probants aussi divers qu’une école, ou un fabricant d’équipements sportifs et vous découvrirez les différents stades à traverser pour réussir, que Jim Collins a dégagés lors de ses nombreuses années de recherche.

Grâce à cet ouvrage, vous apprendrez ainsi les meilleures pratiques pour bénéficier de l’effet volant et passer de la simple performance à l’excellence.

Decline can be avoided.

Decline can be detected.

Decline can be reversed.

Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course?

In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins' research project—more than four years in duration—uncovered five step-wise stages of decline:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success

Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More

Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril

Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom.

Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover.

Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. But, as Collins' research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover—in some cases, coming back even stronger—even after having crashed into the depths of Stage 4.

Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our history, or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

______________________________
NEARLY THIRTY YEARS AGO, Stanford University faculty members Jim Collins and Bill Lazier showed you how to turn an entrepreneurial business into an enduring great company.

Beyond Entrepreneurship became a leadership staple, particularly among small and early-stage companies. And while Collins would go on to write a series of famous bestsellers that have sold more than ten million copies worldwide, this lesser-known early work remains the favourite of many of his loyal readers.

Now, with Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, Collins re-shares the timeless insights in Beyond Entrepreneurship alongside new perspectives gleaned after decades of additional research into what makes great companies tick. In Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, you'll learn how to turn your company into the 2.0 version of itself. You'll be challenged to grow your own leadership as your company grows, from 1x to 2x to 5x to 10x. You'll learn Collins's newest reflections on people decisions, insights that extend beyond his seminal "first who" principle about getting the right people on the bus. You'll learn why luck favours the persistent, and what it means to look for "who luck." You'll learn about the origins of the "BHAG" (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), and why even a small business needs a galvanising BHAG to have a complete and inspiring vision.

You'll also unlock what Collins calls "The Map." The Map is a road map that pulls together the key concepts developed from thirty years of research and writing into one integrated framework for building a company that delivers superior results, makes a distinctive impact, and achieves lasting endurance.

Finally, you'll learn the lessons that Jim Collins himself learned from the most influential mentor in his life, Bill Lazier.

Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 is the ambitious upgrade to a classic. In Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, you'll discover that the goal to turn your business into an enduring great company is as relevant - and as within your reach - as ever.

Pourquoi certaines entreprises, affichant des performances plutôt moyennes, décollent-elles soudain pour rejoindre le peloton de tête ? Qu'est-ce qui les différencie de leurs concurrentes ? Et peut-on étendre à d'autres les principes dont elles se sont inspirées ?

Pendant cinq ans, Jim Collins et son équipe de chercheurs se sont attelés à cette vaste question pour débusquer le secret de la conversion à l'excellence. Onze entreprises, retenues pour leurs performances boursières très supérieures à celles de leur secteur, ont été comparées à leurs concurrentes. Les conclusions qui en ressortent sont étonnantes : loin des stratégies flamboyantes, menées à grand renfort de communication, la transition vers l'excellence s'est faite discrètement, sans stratégie préalable, sous l'impulsion de leaders au profil modeste. Plutôt que d'imposer leur vision, ces derniers ont cherché les meilleurs collaborateurs. Puis ils ont encouragé un débat intense et permanent au sein de l'entreprise. Ce qui a payé ? Le choix d'un concept simple guidant l'activité de l'entreprise, la détermination sans faille des dirigeants à le mettre en œuvre, une discipline de fer d'abord appliquée au sommet de la hiérarchie.

Dérangeant ? Certes, mais bienvenu dans un contexte où certains dirigeants semblent avoir perdu la tête...

« Ce qui fait la différence, c'est la somme de travail que s'impose Collins pour parvenir à ses conclusions qui sont d'autant plus fondées à produire des résultats si inattendus. » Financial Times

"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.

A companion guidebook to the number-one bestselling Good to Great, focused on implementation of the flywheel concept, one of Jim Collins’ most memorable ideas that has been used across industries and the social sectors, and with startups.

The key to business success is not a single innovation or one plan. It is the act of turning the flywheel, slowly gaining momentum and eventually reaching a breakthrough. Building upon the flywheel concept introduced in his groundbreaking classic Good to Great, Jim Collins teaches readers how to create their own flywheel, how to accelerate the flywheel’s momentum, and how to stay on the flywheel in shifting markets and during times of turbulence.

Combining research from his Good to Great labs and case studies from organizations like Amazon, Vanguard, and the Cleveland Clinic which have turned their flywheels with outstanding results, Collins demonstrates that successful organizations can disrupt the world around them—and reach unprecedented success—by employing the flywheel concept.

Elogios a GOOD TO GREAT:

"Este libro escrito a partir de una investigación profunda refuta muchas de las exageraciones actuales de la gestión empresarial —desde el culto al CEO superhombre al culto a la tecnología de la información o la afición a las fusiones y adquisiciones. Estas prácticas no permiten que la mediocridad se convierta en una competencia, sino que deberían permitir que la competencia se convirtiera en excelencia".

Peter F. Drucker

 
"Un libro que ningún CEO debería dejar de comprar".

USA Today

"Collins y su equipo de investigación abordan unas de las cuestiones más importantes que las empresas deberían tratar".

Fortune

"Con ambos libros, Good to Great y Built to Last, el señor Collins ofrece dos mensajes seductores: que la gestión extraordinaria la pueden conse-guir los simples mortales y que sus practicantes pueden desarrollar instituciones excelentes. Es justo lo que los mortales queríamos oír".

Wall Street Journal

"La diferencia es lo duro que trabaja el señor Collins para llegar a sus conclusiones más elementales. Se basan en años de minuciosa investi-gación empírica y todas ellas son las más poderosas para producir los resultados más sorprendentes".

Financial Times

"La idea empresarial del año"

Fast Company

"Collins ha vuelto a escribir un libro que parece haber sido concebido para perdurar".

Business Wee

Good to great: Referenciado como uno de los diez mejores libros sobre gestión empresarial, "Good to Great" nos ofrece todo un conjunto de directrices y paradigmas que debe adoptar cualquier empresa que pretenda diferenciarse de las demás. Después de revisar montañas de datos, de hacer miles de entrevistas y de utilizar rigurosas herramientas de comparación, Jim Collins y su equipo de investigación identificaron los determinantes clave de la excelencia en un conjunto de empresas de élite que dieron el salto hasta conseguir unos resultados extraordinarios y sostenibles.

Girando la rueda: Una guía indispensable que acompaña al libro Good to Great, el número uno de los best-sellers de empresa. La obra se centra en la aplicación del concepto de "rueda o volante de inercia", una de las ideas más reconocidas de Jim Collins y que está siendo empleada en todas las industrias y sectores sociales, así como por las startups. La clave del éxito empresarial no responde a una sola innovación o a un solo plan. Consiste en el efecto de saber hacer girar la rueda, generando impulso de manera gradual para acabar consiguiendo un gran avance.