Built to Last by James Collins

Built to Last About the Book The authors for Built to Last by James C. Collins and co. author Jerry I Porras, spent six years in research in order to write this book. After their thorough research they confessed that their own presumption about business success were spoiled and ruined by their authentic and concrete findings together with the preconceptions of almost everyone else.

Built to Last is the story that identifies eighteen "imaginative" companies and sets out to find out what is being so particular and unique about them where, in order to get on the list, a corporation had to be well-known, along with an astral brand image, and be maximum fifty years old as well as different such as the Wal-Marts, the Mercks and the Disneys etc. Thus, the significance to the success of this book is that the authors didn't waste time in comparison those companies with business failures.

Rather, they use a control group of "successful-but-second-rank" companies in order to emphasize what is so unique about their eighteen "visionary" picks. Thus, they just gave a comparison of Disney to Columbia Pictures, while Ford is compared to GM and Hewlett Packard to Texas Instruments, and many more. Overview and Analysis of the Book According to the authors, the main theme and myth in the book is that visionary companies must begin with an immense product and should be made to go into the future by compelling leaders.

As for example, of this pattern, they recognize, Johnson & Johnson. However, they say that there are a lot of counter-examples but actually, the majority of the "visionary" companies, comprising giants such as TI, 3M and Sony, don't fit the model since they were characterized by total lack of an initial business plan or main idea and by extraordinarily modest leaders.

Collins and Porras exposed the distinctive and unique characteristics of these visionary companies by examining the founding as well as history of these companies, that is the ways in which they have managed both hardship and victory, as well as their continued commitment to their corporate uniqueness, and therefore, the authors illustrated what actions other companies might have taken in order to attain the same level of long-lasting performance. The book Built to Last is inquiring queries about business companies that many ask about churches.

However, the book has limitations as well, but like these other cases, the purpose of similarity and inspiration highlighted in the book proves useful to its readers as the authors has done a marvelous research for writing this book.

According to these authors the business people are no less prone in order for the need to know the latest quick fix for their corporate troubles than church leaders where many training meetings in the business world are still far more religious in their dedication than too many Presbyterians challenge to be in worship.