Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In 1988 two Stanford researchers got stuck: who is the charismatic visionary leader of 3M? Nobody could name him. The company had run through ten generations of chief executives, so no single genius or lucky product could explain it. Collins and Porras spent six years on the answer. They surveyed seven hundred CEOs, took the twenty companies named most often, cut everything founded after 1950, and were left with eighteen: Merck, Sony, Boeing, 3M, Wal-Mart, Disney among them. Then the move that makes the book work: each was paired with a rival from the same era and industry. Boeing against McDonnell Douglas. Motorola against Zenith. Wal-Mart against Ames. The comparisons aren’t failures; they beat the market. Whatever both groups share explains nothing; only the differences count. A dollar in the general market on January 1, 1926, was worth $415 by the end of 1990. A dollar in the comparison companies, $955. A dollar in the eighteen, $6,356.

Jerry I. Porras on SummaryShelf

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies