Collins' curiosity and clear study brings to light some of those factors that contribute to greatness. These findings are grounded within individual, teachable 'points of view' which are easily applied to large organisations and applicable to small busness as well.
Collins puts his findings in clear accessable language. Including the finding that is responsible for the title... That good is the enemy of great.
I highly recommend this book/CD to leaders that are enaged with designing futures and those that work with them. It is core reading for key teams. It has made a significant difference in being able to articulate powerful conversations with teams about that which is tacit and critical to success. Giving common language and principles to engage with. A great study book for learning teams.

Read it - but maybe buy it used

This books does however ask some good questions about how to go from being good to GREAT such as:

1. What am I(or what is the company) intrinsically passionate about?
2. What is the company\I good at? and does this "thing" come naturally?
3. Finally does this area that was chosen have "GREAT" potential?

On the other hand, here are some questions that I felt were left unanswered:

Can't you be GREAT at two things at the same time?

According to Jack Welch's book, you should strive to be #1 OR #2.
btw: Aren't there three medals awarded in the Olympics?

What about sales? The Mary Kay Company motto is "Nothing happens until somebody sells something." (from her book)

What about creating barriers to entry for competitors? (to protect market share like Carnegie or Rockefeller did)

Why didn't you include MORE on the failures of the Good to Great companies? Not just the failures of the competition. Guys like Edison, Lincoln had many defeats before they found ultimate success.
Doesn't bouncing back from failures have something to do with going from Good to Great?

The author mentions getting the right people in the right seats on the bus and the wrong people off. I believe this is an oversimplification. Age, salary, tenure, unions, hierarchy etc make this a very difficult task to accomplish!!

Yes this book took 5 years to write and was supported by 21 staff researchers BUT I am not totally convinced of the results. (and I liked the first book - Built to Last)
That's why I gave it only 3 stars

This book was number one on the Wall Street Journal's list for a long time for good reason. It is a very pleasurable and easy read that will certainly set off light bulbs in your head. The coverage of the iterative process of buildup and breakthrough is outstanding. If you are an executive, manager, or entrepreneur, make sure you grab this book and take it to the beach or knock it out over a weekend. It certainly belongs in your library.

After writing Built to Last, a book which analyzes attributes of companies that have achieved long term success, its author, Jim Collins was chastised by one of his "fans" who commented on the book, "...it's useless... The companies you wrote about were, for the most part, always great... what about the vast majority of companies that wake up partway through life and realize that they're good, but not great?"

Collins was intrigued by this question. His research group promptly went to work searching for companies that had experienced a turning point from flat performance to a sustained (15 year minimum) period of spectacular market beating growth. Each of the eleven companies selected for study had achieved returns at least four times greater than the general market while also maintaining higher returns than its competitors.

These good to great companies have a variety of common factors:
Leadership: Diligent, results-driven executives who are surprising humble.
Strategy: Highly-focused on being the best at only one thing. Most companies took several years to achieve this focus by considering these three questions: What are we deeply passionate about? What can we be the best in the world at? What drives our economic engine?
Honest Assessment: The most successful companies analyzed their successes and failures and didn't "sugar-coat" mistakes.
The Right People: The author sums it up best, "People are not your most important asset. The right people are."

Culture of Discipline: Each company had the discipline to maintain strategic focus.
Smart Use of Technology: Successful companies used technology to accelerate and enable their achievements, but did not consider technology to be a primary driver of results.

I suggest that you read Collins book as soon as possible. In addition to providing recommendations to help your own company grow, it may also help your portfolio grow as you predict which are the next companies to make the transition from "good to great."

In his previous book, "Built to Last," business writer Jim Collins looked at those companies, like Hewlett-Packard and Merck, that started off on the right foot with the right business DNA, in other words those companies that were born great. In "Good to Great" he now turns his attention to the more practical question of companies that achieve greatness.

With the help of a large research team, Collins used a rigorous selection process that identified 11 companies showing a transition from a 15 year period of stock returns no better than 1.25 times the general market to a 15 year period of stock returns more than 3 times the general market. These companies, which included the likes of Gillette and Philip Morris, were then subjected to detailed analysis and compared with similar companies that failed to make the leap to greatness, and even with some companies that made the initial leap only to fall back. "Good to Great" represents the condensed findings of this massive research project, with a range of findings from the logical to the startling that make this book essential reading for anybody in business.

Avoiding fancy jargon, Collins writes in a clear, concise style that uses effective analogies to get his points across. For example, Aesop's fable of the fox and the hedgehog is turned to good effect to contrast those companies that look sleek and skillful but ultimately fail, with those that look more unassuming but know one big thing that ensures their success.

Perhaps the most shocking finding regards styles of leadership, with the great-to-good companies being led by quiet, modest, self-effacing CEOs who combine professional will with personal humility and typically come from within the company -- a marked contrast with the messianic, high-profile CEO who claims to know all the answers.

This is a great book of its kind, but it misses the main point. Underneath all the positive and disciplined thinking favoured by Collins, is the simple metaphysical fact that too much business is killing our planet. Greater efficieny in business merely speeds up our manipulation by materialism, unleashing the uncontrollable economic cycles of growth that will finally chew up our hapless globe till it is reduced to an overpopulated and overexpolited travesty of greed, materialism, and subjection of the human spirit in the name of business efficiency.