Inside Great Companies

The books, in order

1. 1

   Business · 15 min

   Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

   Jim Collins

   A company that lives content with average results rarely feels any real reason to chase a truly big leap.

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2. 2

   Business · 15 min

   Built to Last

   Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras

   What holds a company together for decades is not that brilliant spark at the beginning, it's having turned into a factory of new sparks.

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3. 3

   Business · 15 min

   How the Mighty Fall

   Jim Collins

   Success becomes a blind spot the moment the team starts treating what worked as natural talent, and not as a specific decision made at a specific moment.

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4. 4

   Leadership · 17 min

   Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck: Why Some Thrive Despite Them All

   Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen

   In Collins and Hansen's reading, Amundsen reached the South Pole less because of courage and more because of preparation: years of testing equipment and learning from people who already lived on the ice.

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5. 5

   Business · 17 min

   The Innovator's Dilemma

   Clayton M. Christensen

   The biggest risk for leaders today is not the obvious, strong competitor. It's the small, ignored one aiming at a customer nobody at the top is fighting over.

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6. 6

   Business · 16 min

   Blitzscaling

   Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh

   Growing fast only pays off when a real network effect exists: without one, speed is just spending money faster.

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7. 7

   Business · 17 min

   Dream Big

   Cristiane Correa

   Cutting waste for real means looking at every expense as if it didn't exist yet and asking whether you would create it today, not just trimming a percentage off what's already there.

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8. 8

   Business · 15 min

   Let My People Go Surfing

   Yvon Chouinard

   Hiring people who already live the company's values outside of work saves you an entire manual of rules and policing.

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9. 9

   Biographies and Memoirs · 16 min

   Steve Jobs

   Walter Isaacson

   Cutting features from a product until only the essentials are left takes more courage than adding one more button to please everybody.

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10. 10

    Biographies and Memoirs · 17 min

    Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

    Phil Knight

    Selling well and having cash to spare are completely different things; plenty of good companies go under because they grow too fast without the money to support their own success.

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