Built to last : successful habits of visionary companies ([3rd ed.])

'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.' 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 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?' 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.