Most Popular Books by Jim Collins

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Jim Collins, international bestselling author of Good to Great, offers transformative lessons on constructing—and reconstructing—a life through the cliff moments and transitions we all will face repeatedly in our lives. What to make of a life? It is a question we all wrestle with more than once: How do we find our way in the world? How do we make it past the cliffs, significant events that can radically change a life? How do we keep the inner fire burning bright, long and late? Inspired by relentless curiosity, Jim Collins devoted a decade to studying these questions and to minutely analyzing those moments when life flips from clarity to confusion and casts us into a befuddling fog. His exploration follows various lives side-by-side, paired together at cliffs, and analyzes the different choices made and divergent paths taken. Two rock musicians confronting a future without the group that had brought them success. Two public figures tainted by scandal having to make decisions about how to rebuild their lives. Two suffragists achieving their epic goal and so left with the puzzle of what to do next. Two figure skaters seeking new purpose when their Olympic careers come to an end. What emerges from Collins’s extensive studies—of writers, actors, scientists, leaders and many others—is a framework for understanding how individual lives can be built, sustained and constantly renewed. By examining the long arc of these remarkable lives, Collins tackles life’s questions. What does it take to: Discover a deeply fulfilling role in life—one that you are naturally ‘encoded’ for—and then to find a second one, if the first one ends? Overcome a major cliff—a fracture point that forces choices about what’s next and calls for you to re-envision the years to come? Make your personal economics work so that you can focus on one big thing that feeds your inner fire? Navigate the fog, when you feel uncertain or even outright lost, and build confidence step by step? Build personal momentum decade upon decade, so that your most creative and energetic years are spread across an entire lifetime? Achieve the imperative to “Know Thyself” and apply self-knowledge to each phase of life? And for the first time, Collins movingly chronicles his own story to reveal how undertaking this project transformed him, changing his thinking and reshaping his emotions in fundamental ways. Surprising, story-driven, deeply researched, and uplifting, What to Make of a Life is a book like no other, convincingly showing how a richly fulfilled life is within reach of us all.

First Published in 1995. Much of recent theory has characterized life in media-sophisticated societies in terms of a semiotic overload which, allegedly, has had only devastating effects on communication and subjectivity. In Architectures of Excess, Jim Collins argues that, while the rate of technological change has indeed accelerated, so has the rate of absorption. The seemingly endless array of information has generated not chaos but different structures and strategies, which harness that excess by turning it into forms of art and entertainment. Digital sampling in rap music and cyber-punk science fiction are well-known examples of techno-pop textuality, but Collins concentrates on other contemporaneous phenomena that are also envisioning new cultural landscapes by accessing that array--hyper-self-reflexivity in mall movies, best sellers, and prime-time television; the deconstructive vs. new-classical debate in architecture; the emergence of the "New Black Aesthetic;" the development of retro-modernism in interior design and the fashion industries. The analyses of these disparate, discontinous attempts to develop a meaningful sense of location, in an historical as well as a spatial sense, address a cluster of interconnected questions: How is the array of information being "domesticated?" How has appropriationism evolved from the Pop-Art of the sixties to the sampling of the nineties? How has the relationship between tradition, innovation, and evaluation been altered? Architectures of Excess investigates how these phenomena reflect change in taste and subjectivity, considering how we must account for both, pedagogically.

From Jim Collins, the most influential business thinker of our era, comes an upgrade of his classic, Beyond Entrepreneurship, that includes all-new findings and world-changing insights. What''s the roadmap to create a company that not only survives its infancy but thrives, changing the world for decades to come? Jim Collins and his mentor, Bill Lazier, answered this question in their book, Beyond Entrepreneurship. Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 is a new and improved version of that book. In this upgraded edition, Jim Collins reexamines the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship with his 2020 perspective. The book includes the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship, as well as four new chapters and fifteen new essays. Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 pulls together the key concepts across Collins'' thirty years of research into one integrated framework called The Map. The result is a singular reading experience, which presents a unified vision of company creation that will fascinate not only Jim''s millions of dedicated readers worldwide, but also introduce a new generation to his remarkable work.

Enumerates the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous and fast-moving times.

From Jim Collins, the most influential business thinker of our era, comes an ambitious upgrade of his classic, Beyond Entrepreneurship, that includes all-new findings and world-changing insights. What''s the roadmap to create a company that not only survives its infancy but thrives, changing the world for decades to come? Nine years before the publication of his epochal bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins and his mentor, Bill Lazier, answered this question in their bestselling book, Beyond Entrepreneurship. Beyond Entrepreneurship left a definitive mark on the business community, influencing the young pioneers who were, at that time, creating the technology revolution that was birthing in Silicon Valley. Decades later, successive generations of entrepreneurs still turn to the strategies outlined in Beyond Entrepreneurship to answer the most pressing business questions. BE 2.0 is a new and improved version of the book that Jim Collins and Bill Lazier wrote years ago. In BE 2.0, Jim Collins honors his mentor, Bill Lazier, who passed away in 2005, and reexamines the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship with his 2020 perspective. The book includes the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship, as well as four new chapters and fifteen new essays. BE 2.0 pulls together the key concepts across Collins'' thirty years of research into one integrated framework called The Map. The result is a singular reading experience, which presents a unified vision of company creation that will fascinate not only Jim''s millions of dedicated readers worldwide, but also introduce a new generation to his remarkable work.

World-famous stories in a highly accessible format. Illustrated text withsimplified vocabulary. Teacher''s Guides to enrich instruction with: A plot synopsis of each selection, Questions to tap prior knowledge, Discussions to elicit personal responses, and Additional questions provided to stimulate critical thinking and understanding of literacy techniques.

Jim Collins argues that postmodernism and popular culture have together undermined the master system of "culture." By looking at a wide range of texts and forms he investigates what happens to the notion of culture once different discourses begin to envision that culture in conflicting ways, constructing often contradictory visions of it simultaneously.

The classic Harvard Business Review articles every manager and aspiring leader should read--and share with their teams--from such bestselling Harvard Business Review authors as Peter Drucker, Clayton Christensen, John Kotter, Daniel Goleman, Jim Collins, Gary Hamel, W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne, and many more. Each compact book represents the most important ideas on management, leadership, and life. Build your professional library and advance your career with these 16 timeless business classics. The HBR Classics Boxed Set includes: Peter Drucker''s bestselling "Managing Oneself," "What Makes an Effective Executive," and "The Theory of the Business"; Clayton Christensen''s inspiring "How Will You Measure Your Life?"; Daniel Goleman''s articles on emotional intelligence--"Leadership That Gets Results" and "What Makes a Leader?"; author of Good to Great Jim Collins''s "Turning Goals into Results"; W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne''s "Blue Ocean Leadership" and "Red Ocean Traps"; John Kotter''s "Managing Your Boss"; Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith''s "The Discipline of Teams"; Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad''s "Strategic Intent"; William A. Sahlman''s "How to Write a Great Business Plan"; Chris Argyris''s "Teaching Smart People How to Learn"; Theodore Levitt''s "Marketing Myopia"; Joseph B. Pine''s "Do You Want to Keep Your Customers Forever?". The Harvard Business Review Classics series offers you the opportunity to make seminal Harvard Business Review articles a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world--and will have a direct impact on you today and for years to come.

The Challenge Built to Last, 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. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study 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? The Standards 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 stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world''s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don''t. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Highlights the origins and meaning of many superstitions.

A companion guidebook to the number-one bestselling Good to Great, focused on implementation of the flywheel concept, one of Jim Collins’ most memorable ideas that has been used across industries and the social sectors, and with startups. The key to business success is not a single innovation or one plan. It is the act of turning the flywheel, slowly gaining momentum and eventually reaching a breakthrough. Building upon the flywheel concept introduced in his groundbreaking classic Good to Great, Jim Collins teaches readers how to create their own flywheel, how to accelerate the flywheel’s momentum, and how to stay on the flywheel in shifting markets and during times of turbulence. Combining research from his Good to Great labs and case studies from organizations like Amazon, Vanguard, and the Cleveland Clinic which have turned their flywheels with outstanding results, Collins demonstrates that successful organizations can disrupt the world around them—and reach unprecedented success—by employing the flywheel concept.

"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." So write Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in this groundbreaking book that shatters myths, provides new insights, and gives practical guidance to those who would like to build landmark companies that stand the test of time. 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 -- they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 -- 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?" What separates General Electric, 3M, Merck, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, Walt Disney, and Philip Morris from their rivals? How, for example, did Procter & Gamble, which began life substantially behind rival Colgate, eventually prevail as the premier institution in its industry? How was Motorola able to move from a humble battery repair business into integrated circuits and cellular communications, while Zenith never became dominant in anything other than TVs? How did Boeing unseat McDonnell Douglas as the world''s best commercial aircraft company -- what did Boeing have that McDonnell Douglas lacked? By answering such questions, Collins and Porras go beyond the incessant barrage of management buzzwords and fads of the day to discover timeless qualities that have consistently distinguished out-standing companies. They also provide inspiration to all executives and entrepreneurs by destroying the false but widely accepted idea that only charismatic visionary leaders can build visionary 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.

This book is full of anecdotes of people and events encountered over a lifetime of sailing in South East Asia, Australia, and the Middle East—treasure hunters, magicians, the American Mayor of Osaka, smugglers, a brave flier, and lone sailors.

Building upon the concepts introduced in Good to Great, Jim Collins answers the most commonly asked questions raised by his readers in the social sectors. Using information gathered from interviews with over 100 social sector leaders, Jim Collins shows that his "Level 5 Leader" and other good-to-great principles can help social sector organizations make the leap to greatness.

A look at how technology and literary, visual, and consumer cultures have combined over the past two decades to transform a once solitary, print-based experience into an exuberantly social activity.

Decline can be avoided. Decline can be detected. Decline can be reversed. Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course? In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins'' research project—more than four years in duration—uncovered five step-wise stages of decline: Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom. Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover. Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. But, as Collins'' research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover—in some cases, coming back even stronger—even after having crashed into the depths of Stage 4. Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our history, or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.