Built to Last

Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Good to Great, Book 2)

By: Jim Collins

Narrated by: Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras

Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's Summary

Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras took 18 truly exceptional and long-lasting companies and studied each 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 the comparison companies and what were the common practices these enduringly great companies followed throughout their history?"

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 21st century and beyond.

©2011 Jim Collins (P)2019 HarperAudio

Worst audio book doesn’t even read the book

This is absolutely bs the book and the audio book aren’t the same what the hell is the point of having and audio book if the reading version is different

dated

There are so many better books on the topic of building a successful business that are more topical and applicable. Built To Last feels like what it is, a 23 year old business book written by professors with no business experience.

This Audiobook is Outdated

I read along as the audiobooks are read at 2.0x speed or greater. This audiobook, jumps around and misses countless key points and I spend my time trying to find where the audiobook has jumped to.

Good to Great (also by Jim Collins) by ~95% word for word.

In the first half of this audiobook (recorded in 2004, allegedly) is ~60% accurate to the text, and the copyright on my paperback edition is 2002.

So many examples are glossed over, pages skipped and for the first time, the chapters on audible misalign with those in the text.

Audible Chapter 15 is Text Chapter 5? Come on!

Nowhere Near as Amazing as the Book Good To Great.

Good to Great was Amazing, so obviously one would think this book would be just as great. For me it was not it dragged out with many business stories.
My takeaway that sums up this book is if you own or manage a business make sure you have a strong core value and work from there, done I just summed up an over 6 hour book for you.

Great compliment to other books in this series.

I've read all the books in the series but wanted to try it on audible. it was really nice to be able to listen to the book learned a lot again and I'm going to go through it in the future one more time

A good book about business

This is a good book, but from time to time I was under the impression that there are some irrelevant information given to fit the time and space.
I think the whole information can be fitted into half the time and actually half the book.
Otherwise interesting and good content for entrepreneurs and business people

Instrumental tool fir growth

This book offers a blueprint to become the organization you have the potential to become and sustain.

Values

Just read it. Now in a covid and post covid world makes sense again.
What is really important are values.

great information

great information to be used in all parts of life. this isn't just a business book but also a book that can help you to achieve your goals

A fun read, even if not immediately apply-able

I read Collins’ “Good to Great” in 2017 and had this one on my list for a while. I’m not sure why it took me four years to get to, but, here we are.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty fun look into what makes companies great, what sets the best ones apart from others, and what keeps them functioning at the highest level, decade after decade.

Collins and Porras do a great job of distilling business / company success into simple, bite-sized pieces here. You can tell they put a lot of thought into this one; they describe their research process and how scientific they were in determining just what makes a company “built to last.”

I think one of the nice things about the book is that, despite being written in 1994, it still holds up pretty well today (2021). I’d credit that to the fact that Collins and Porras look at high-level company characteristics rather than market or time-specific qualities.

Though not all of the content within it is necessarily actionable for all too many people besides C-level executives, it’s still a fun read and one that entrepreneurs and businesspeople, alike, will enjoy.

-Brian Sachetta
Author of “Get Out of Your Head”