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.

Table of Contents :

Acknowledgements

Preface to the tenth anniversary edition

Preface to the first edition

Introduction

1. The best of the best

2. Clock building, not time telling Interlude: No "tyranny of the OR"

3. More than profits

4. Preserve the core/stimulate progress

5. Big hairy audacious goals

6. Cult-like cultures

7. Try a lot of stuff and keep what works

8. Home-grown management

9. Good enough never is

10. The end of the beginning

11. Building the vision

Epilogue: Frequently asked questions

Appendix A: Research issues

Appendix B: Founding roots of visionary companies and comparison companies

Appendix C: Tables

Appendix D: Chapter notes

Index