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Summary: An excellently written study that is a great reference...
Review: After having purchased this book last year, I had no time yet to put it on my bookshelf. It is too interesting. This book is an excellent resource for everybody who is interested in studying successful company's approaches to corporate strategy. It is one of the truly best books on this topic and based on a very precise fact collection. I only can admit them to be true, being myself an employee in the marketing department of one of the mentioned companies. Congratulations to the authors. A long time will pass before I put this research on the shelf...
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Summary: A true eye-opener, packed with useful insights and details
Review: This book does a splendid job of detailing how the world's most successful, long-established companies have flourished. The use of comparison companies was especially informative because many of the intangible aspects of good management have no absolute scale against which to measure. The authors have done a masterful job of organizing a tremendous amount of information into a cohesive and readable arrangement - and it makes sense! When the visionary companies take an action that contradicts the typical characteristics discovered and explained by the authors, they come right out and say, "It doesn't make sense to us." Also well done is their end-of-chapter guidelines for those readers who might put the book to use. Their writing is fresh, brave, and again, very useful! An exciting book to read!
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Summary: is my theme of thesis (Mexico) in a visionary company (LALA)
Review: thanks to you because your book is a great guide to my thesis. I aplied all the points of your book to check if a company of Mexico is visionary. I found that the caracteristics are similar.
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Summary: A good warning for those too worried with change
Review: Even though, Built to Last, lacks of a definitive structure, as those of The Seven Habit of Highly effective People or even the Fifth Discpline, as one of the reviewer has pointed out, it is a real and necessary warning in this stage of mankind in which we all have the tendency to be driven by the fashion of change instead of remembering that it is EVOLUTION what really matters. By destroying twelve myths, Collins and Porras give us a good reference of permanence in this age, and how those companies that last have shown a great respect for their leaders as a basic nucleus; the way they are open to change externally, but at the same time, internally they have preserved the core by not changing what must not change: the nucleus. At this very moment, the flatten tendency fashion in organization, perhaps because of a partial interpretation of the Fifth Discipline have taken many organization to destroy their nucleus. Even though the metaphor of the Clock Builder is a good one, it is not fair with reality, as time tellers as Westinghouse or Columbia Pictures, also made great contributions in their fields, and that was their mission... As they tried to demostrate with the "and/or preposition", we need both: Clock builders and Time tellers . Again the new emerging basic unit system concept in which, the opposites can be complementary by immersing them in a comprehensive whole, must be used by those interested in Management and leadership if they want to have a good frame of reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Some good ideas, some terrible audio
Review: There is some good work in this audio book, although, to quote a friend, it's about 20 minutes of good information that they somehow crammed onto two hours of tape. The various points are belabored well past any argument for helpful review.But the real shame is that the narration is SO terrible. These guys may be researchers, but they can't read out loud. The narration is bad to the extent that it simply hurts the book. Business audio, unfortunately, is such that you normally need to listen through more than once, and it's just too terrible to contemplate in this case. Why Harper Audio did not insist on a trained voice to read this tape suggests that, as a company, perhaps THEY aren't built to last.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Habits are in, habits sell, at least in titles, but I would have preferred the authors to be more original. I guess they didn't figure they could get away with "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Companies." Aside from the title, I had to wonder if they spent more time trying to squeeze the companies they covered into their preconceived list of habits than they did actually examining those companies. Those familiar with any of the companies might have trouble recognizing them here. Reality seldom fits into such simplistic molds.
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting book
Review: Among the plethora of "how to succeed" management books, most of them just an exercise in trying to create a bestseller, this one stands out as bringing some fresh insight and information about succesful companies. Apart from Peter Drucker, the only genuine intelectual writing about business, this is one of the few management books worth reading.
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Summary: OUTSTANDING FOR OWNERS OF EMERGING COMPANIES
Review: We were looking around the universe for some good principles that surely help us to build a great company, great in terms of being a place to work, great in terms of achieving our high tech objectives but at the same time do a good citizen labor. The book is a great qualitative and quantitative research, expressed in simple words complex things you should put together in order to build a company that can trascend. Congratulations to the authors.
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Summary: A MUST READ FOR PEOPLE UNHAPPY WITH THEIR CURRENT EMPLOYMENT
Review: This book eloquently articulates how the culture of a company is its underlying strength. It also anecdotes how important it is for an employee's value set to closely resemble that of the company they work for. Collins and Porras should be given a medal for the outstanding quanitative work that they presented!!
Rating:
Summary: Very enlightening.
Review: The greatest thing about the audio book is the tantalizing study of the engine of great companies that has can have impact for any business or life. Sum it up in one word: vision is what's needed. But there's more to say than just that. I found the book extremely useful and learned simple but exciting truths from it! (The only thing I didn't like about the audio book is that it is an abridgement and some of the detailed company comparisons were left out.)
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