Good to Great

<p><b>The Challenge </b><p><i>Built to Last,</i> 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.<p>But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?<p><b>The Study </b><p>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?<p><b>The Standards </b><p>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...