It's really 183 pages (the rest is just research notes). The whole book is summarized on page 175. There's some interesting anecdotes and the ideas make sense, but this is a very slight (as in not very deep) book. What makes a company great is that they do deep analysis of the business, prepare, take advantage of success without endangering the company, re-evaluate periodically, and work steadily for success, making adjustments if necessary.

Well written, easy examples to be successful and I like the take-away of this book.

What were some of the most shocking / memorable incidents you can recollect since the last 10 years?• 9/11?• The Financial Meltdown? Lehman Brothers? Billions getting wiped out?• The iPod, iPad, iPhone revolution?A lot has happened in the last 10 years.Giants who were invincible are now forever invisible.The corporations with abundant financial health are today on a dying life support system.The mortal legends whom we always remembered have become the immortal legacies we will never forget.So mu...

This book is an engaging exploration of why some companies become great while others don't, despite experiencing similar uncertainty, chaos, and “luck”. It shows that greatness depends on action and discipline, not circumstance or luck. Essentially, success depends more on what we do than what the world does to us. This finding is encouraging and empowering, since we often feel that we’re at the mercy of forces outside our control.I liked the point that one of the most important forms of luck is...

Best takeaway was that luck is based on people. Get lucky with the people that you surround yourself with. The triangle framework of fanatic discipline, productive paranoia, and empirical creativity had some great backup evidence, but it's still unclear whether they can be trained or if they're developed from a young age / inborn...in which case, how much can we really "choose"? The author seems to imply that Progressive insurance got lucky by having a 10x son (Peter Lewis) to takeover as CEO. I...

Great, great, great! Go out and read immediately. A wonderfully hopeful and logic-based formula for progress.

The concepts in this book are solid. The text seemed somewhat repetitive. Not only that, but just about all of their findings about what distinguishes companies that blow away the competition even in tough times are simply rigorous application of the theory of what works. Zoom out, zoom in? Use both Sensing and Intuition. SMaC? Keeping what works is the strength of those who prefer Introversion and Sensing, and further, is often seen as "resistance" by leaders with other preferences. I've never

Amazing book. Concise and with the proper principles and values!Highly recommended!

4.5 stars. Despite the format of easy-reading management book, the emphasis on quantitive data and detailed analysis of pairs of similar companies does make this convincing as more than a collection of opinions an anecdotes. The conclusions are also both surprising in places and yet instinctively compelling. They're also quite counter-cultural for the genre in that "being the most innovative" and "moving rapidly in response to change" as a company actually turned out to be losing strategies quit...

It's not a bad book but it does not stand out like previous Collins books (Built to Last and From Good to Great), I did not find that much novel information from it. Furthermore I was a bit annoyed that the authors claimed about a massive research conducted for high number of companies but the actual results were barely mentioned (a few examples like Southwestern, Apple, Microsoft and Intel were used throughout the book, Amundsen's Sout Pole and Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" as historical case stud...

You know those books you wish you'd read 4 years ago? For me that's one of them. So that's my last book written by Jim Collins. It might be the best one. The book is about how to deal with uncertainty in business, sums up the attitude of business leaders, the framework of testing, avoiding risk, and planning. Highly actionable, I've read it in 24 hours. Highly recommended.

I am a huge admirer of Jim Collins' research, methods and tight, accessible, methodical writing. "Great By Choice," however, suggests that perhaps the scholarly architecture that made his previous work so great may be losing a bit of its strength. There's a bit of a teabag on its third cup of tea here. The core thesis seems less powerful. The evidence just as good and rich, but in the service of smaller objectives. The narrative less nuanced. Well worth reading, but not as provocative as Collins...

Good book. Several core ideas are hard to prove wrong, thus the extent of how scientific these evidences are is questionable.However, key things I took for myself:1. Level 5 ambition leaders:- passionately driven for a cause beyond themselves;- doing it not for themselves, for the company (channel their ego to smth bigger than they)2. Empirical Creativity:- fire bullets, not cannibals (this idea intersects with SCRUM (Sutherland), Lean Startup (Ries), 4 Steps for Epiphany (Steve Blank)- reasonin...

The fourth book in the series of business management studies by Jim Collins and his colleagues. Built to Last was the first, followed by Good to Great and How the Mighty Fall.In a quote from the book jacket, Great by Choice is the result of a study of "companies that rose to greatness - beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years - in environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control." According to the authors, the...

Another great insight into the world of successful companies and their leaders. So much to learn from!!!

The future cannot be exactly foretold, but we can create it10Xers reject the choice between consistency and change — they embrace consistency and change, both at the same timeThey take full responsibility and when they do this they demonstrate fanatic discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoiaEmpirical creativity — tempered by reality and facts rather than whim and untested theoriesProductive paranoia — a never-ending and very careful assessment of risk10X CEO — a great dedication...

Wow another classic from Jim Collins! Great by Choice is a definite read for anybody trying to make an effect change in the world through organizations and companies.This time around Jim is joined by University of California Berkeley Business Professor Morten Hansen as they work to answer the question, "Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?" To answer this question both Collins and Morten use the matched-pair case method in which they pair a 10Xer or high fl...

This short book talks about how to create a great company, which it takes to mean (1) performing 10X better than comparisons (2) in wildly uncertain environments. It's a pretty good and even contains some actionable things.The authors pick a number of companies that outperform the market by 10x or more and compare them to a similar companies that don't. Examples are Intel vs. AMD, Microsoft vs. Apple (before Steve Jobs' return), Southwest vs. Pacific Southwest and so on. The key insights map pre...

A heartening read.This book demonstrates that luck does not create success. Innovation does not create success. Action and discipline are required. Indeed, the successful have three characteristics: Fanatic discipline, Empirical creativity and Productive paranoia.In other words, hard work, data-based decision making and preparing for the worst are enabling forces for achievement. Considering all the stuff about the fourth industrial revolution and the creative economy, this book demonstrates tha...

I liked the lessons this offered, but it felt a little... "toot my own horn" at the beginning, and it kind of turned me off a little. The historical examples, especially those involving the South Pole expeditions and the IMAX trip to Everest, were interesting reads.3.5 stars, really.