Good to Great sprang from a critique of the author’s earlier bestseller, Built to Last, an investigation of the habits common to high-achieving companies. At a meeting in San Francisco, a management executive for a successful firm told the author that Built to Last was a terrific book, but, unfortunately, it was useless because all the companies discussed were successful from the get-go. This raised the question of whether companies that get off to a halting, mediocre start are doomed to persist in mediocrity. Is it a disease without a cure? Or is it possible for a mediocre company to suddenly become a great company with prolonged, far-above-market returns?

This line of inquiry led to a five-year research project. The methodology for this study involved a thorough analysis (interviews, articles, and all available statistics) of 14 companies. All of the companies selected began as mediocre enterprises, but then, at some critical transition point, began (and then continued) to experience growth at least three times greater than the general market for 15 years or more. For a sense of scale, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Disney, and Wal-Mart were “only” 2.5 times above market averages. The 14 companies represented a wide variety of industries. Among the companies that met the above criteria were Circuit City (18.5 times the market), Gillette (7.39 times the market), Kimberly-Clark (3.42 times the market), and Walgreens (7.34 times the market).

To increase the rigor of the study, 14 additional “competitor companies” were factored into the analysis. Each company that had gone from good to great after a critical transition period was paired with a company in the same industry that had had similar resources and opportunities, yet stayed mediocre. It was important to compare companies within industries and to compare the mediocre companies to the good-to-greats. Otherwise, it would be like looking for commonalities between Olympic gold medalists from different sports: there would be common elements, but it would be far less illuminating than investigating the differences between good athletes and the best in a particular sport.

For each of these companies, the good-to-great period took place in the final quarter of the twentieth century. People might object that the recent technological and economic developments would render older data irrelevant. But when has the economy ever not been changing? Electricity, the phone, the car profoundly shaped economic life and activity. Even if the rate of change is faster than ever before, these findings point to universals, timeless truths that apply to people regardless of time or place. Consider the relationship between engineering and the laws of physics: even if approaches to engineering change drastically in appearance and sophistication, designs will still be subject to the same laws of physics. This book is less a lecture on engineering and more a lesson in physics—rules that have been hiding in plain sight.