![]() That's not to say that other methods of inquiry are without merit -the Harvard Business Review makes pretty darn good use of case studies, for example- but way too often Collins's great truths seemed like square pegs crammed into round holes, because a round hole is what he wants. ![]() It's not, in short, scientific in any way. ![]() It's not systematic, it's not replicable, it's not generalizable, it's not systematic, it's not free of bias, it's not model driven, and it's not collaborative. Collin's brand of research is not my kind. I've got several problems with this book, the biggest of which stem from fundamentally viewpoints on how to do research. The balance of the book is spent expanding on pithy catch phrases that describe the great companies, like "First Who, Then What" or "Be a Hedgehog" or "Grasp the Flywheel, not the Doom Loop." No, no, I'm totally serious. They also present for each great company what they call a "comparison company," which is kind of that company with a goatee and a much less impressive earnings record. Collins and his crack team of researchers say they swam through stacks of business literature in search of info on how to pull this feat off, and came up with a list of great companies that illustrate some concepts central to the puzzle. ![]() This book by Jim Collins is one of the most successful books to be found in the "Business" section of your local megabookstore, and given how it purports to tell you how to take a merely good company and make it great, it's not difficult to see why that might be so. ![]()
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