Average Rating: 
Rating:  - a critique rather than review of the book
As with so many business books, this one lauds a few great companies (let us see where they are in 10 years) and then look at what they have in common. A couple of points.... (a) Minor complaint since this book was written by Academics. This is what anyone with elementary training in methodology or statistics would call selection on the dependent variable. Select good companies then ask why they are good. Look for commonalities. Write a book. Well how do you concretely test whether other companies have these traits or not? Proper testing would have been to select the entire universe of companies in some year (say 1950) and code each company based on all of these factors/vaiables and test the relationships between each of these "variables" and their stock price.(Who are these reviews that see this book as built on mountains of good data?) (b) Basically same thrust as the last book (built to last)..great companies built on an internal culture that (hopefully) encourages meritocracy, adaptability and innovativeness and solid management. Brilliant leaders don't help because by their nature they are one man shows and have trouble building solid management and culture to survive them. Similarly they are not apt to be one product companies because those product markets will change and they will have no new sources of growth (the Polaroid or Xerox problem). I guess I just feel like the early points are clear in the beginning and can easily be summed up in two pages. (c) Most importantly, even if we assume their points are correct, the tougher question remains. How do we create the right corporate culture? Many CEOs know their company has the wrong culture but have difficulty changing it. Jack Welch was working on GEs for 20 years and it was not so bad to start with. Why not study GE's culture? Toyota's legendary ability to innovate. Microsoft? Intel? All companies that have adapted particular cultures that demonstrates their ability to go head to head and consistently out think and out perform other companies. How about an investment bank, where all the value is in the people and therefore culture and management would be even more important. (e) On the other hand, it is good to congratulate them on choosing companies that are not overstudied (GE) or gain huge competitive advantages because of a particularly business model, that while brilliant make it hard to assess the overall management of the firm (Dell, Walmart). Looking at a bank (wells fargo), a consumer products firm (Gillette), and a retailer (Walmart) makes for interestign studies with which people are not familiar. This seems to be the real key tough question. (f) Gillete is listed as a great company. It trades at where it did in 1996/1997. Not to complain as all companies have their ups and downs and it is dangerous to do any study as inevitably at least one company in a study will be doing poorly, but doesn't this offer caution to any findings.
Rating: - Good Stuff but Could Have Been More Believable If .......
Despite my doubts about the validity of some of Mr. Collins data, the book is worth reading - if only to learn the buzz words and phrases it creates for business folks today. That said, as a former researcher and current business person, I am very dubious of his studies results. Time after time in the book, Mr. Collins brings the reader into the team's preliminary discussion of their findings - frequently offering study snippets like "we didn't want to conclude this but every single one of our Great companies did x,y or z" whatever the point of his chapter happened to be. The problem is that I just don't buy that all of his major points were universally true across every single company they compared - both the great and the not so great. Objective data analysis just does not turn out this conveniently true if the researcher is unbiased. In fact, many important truths are found because of the data contradicting preconceived ideas.I am not implying that Mr. Collins and his team are not honest. Rather, I think they may be guilty of assuming there must be universal, simple truths rather than general principles, when life or business simply don't turn out that way in the real world. At times, the writer's tone seems ike an evangelical preacher trying to get everyone to agree with him or they will perish in the fire's of hell. Why does he spend so much time trying to convince us of the universal, absolute truth of each of his findings? Why are there no "truths" that were not always present in the Great companies? Wouldn't we have still believed him if Level 5 leaders, for example, were only present in 72% of the Great companies? For me, the book would have been more powerful and I would have taken it more seriously if the findings weren't proclaimed to be quite so universal. But, such real truth was not going to happen for this team because that would not fit their preconceived models and apparent need to find black and white truths only.
Rating:  - An interesting read
Let me say the author makes for a fast and amusing read. Some points that are brought out are interesting and will give you a moment for pause to think. I have to question the validity of discussing past practices rather than current trends. McDondald's is currently suffering greatly and will post a loss for the first time ever, but they were not having difficulties during the time the book was written. The book can be mistaken for stating the obvious, but lets see how this book measures up in time. Data is compliled to support arguments, but data can be compiled to support just about anything as long as you swizzle it correctly.
While the book is interesting, and a wonderful read. I wish I would have checked this book out from the library rather than purchasing it.
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