Biult to Last - Chapters Summary

Built To Last James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras Chapter 1 The Best of The Best The critical question is not “What’s common across a group of companies?” Rather, the critical issues are: “What’s essentially different about these companies? Selected a comparison company for each visionary company. Compare gold medal teams to silver and bronze medal teams whenever possible to give real meaning to our findings. History and Evolution They reflect the accumulation of past events and the shaping force of underlying genetics that have roots in prior generations. We believed our comparison analysis would be much more powerful from a historical perspective. Looked at companies throughout their entire life spans and in direct comparison to other companies. Employed a framework based on a technique called “Organization Stream Analysis for collecting and sorting information. Chapter 2 Clock Building, Not Time Telling Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is “time telling”; building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building.” They concentrate primarily on building an organization-building a ticking clock- rather than on hitting a market just right with a visionary product idea and riding the growth curve on an attractive product life cycle. Their greatest creation is the company itself and what it stands for. Our research punched holes in two widely held and deeply cherished myths: the myth of the great idea and the myth of the great and charismatic leader. We found that creating and building a visionary company absolutely does not require either a great idea or a great and
Built to Last by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras Natural Church Development – Functional Structures Review Notes by Ron Bonar 1 of 15

charismatic leader. In fact, we found evidence that great ideas brought forth by charismatic leaders might be negatively correlated with building a