Good to Great Book Review

I found Good To Great incredibly interesting. Jim Collins and a team of researchers set out to try and find what common traits “great companies” had.

They created strict criteria of what constitutes a “great” company and then compared those criteria to a comparable company and ran the study across a variety of industries.

The core concepts of what makes a good company great were found in all of the selections in the book.

This book was written in the early 2000s and because the criteria were the company had to be great for 15+ years, it left out some more current examples.

That is honestly the only thing I wish this book had more of (current examples of great companies) because so much has changed in the business landscape.

Jim breaks down the biggest drivers of a good to a great company by chapters. They are as follows.

1. Level 5 leadership
2. First who…then what
3. Confront the brutal facts
4. The hedgehog concept
5. A culture of discipline
6. Technology accelerators
7. The flywheel and the doom loop
8. From good to great to built to last

Biggest Insights

My favorite concept from the book was the hedgehog concept. It states that you find what you are the best at, not good at, but the best at and you do it no matter how much it hurts.

If you find your hedgehog concept early you can weather recessions, leadership changes, and competitors taking market share.