Built to Last: Thinking Growth

Reading more of "Built to Last", the writer identifies two major ways towards growth: audacious goals and continuous, incremental learning. As self-evident it may seem, these goals are indeed difficult to put in practice. Further, to sustain the effort and mental discipline for this, the goals need to be backed by a strong cultural identity. Here, the book is pretty similar to "In Search of Excellence". In fact, I feel that it simply takes the ideas presented by Waterman and Peters to their logical next step, exploring the cultural aspect more thoroughly and expanding upon the idea of "sticking to the knitting". Overall, it has helped me to strengthen my understanding about building a successful organization. Nevertheless, I do have my doubts on one point- that a company does not need a successful product to start with. I agree with the examples of HP, P&G, 3M and Sony; great companies that did not start their lives with successful products. Experimentation enabled them to stumble on good products and then move ahead. Hence, I understand that a super product/idea is not a pre-requisite for a great company. In financial terms, however, the amount of capital this can eat up and the difficulties it may present to sustain a start-up are a bit jarring. For every Sony that makes it through these turbulence, there will be a 1000 who won't. Starting with a good product can provide the entrepreneur the necessary cover to launch his company, provided he does not get too much stuck up with the first product. Overall, I think it would make the whole process less painful.

The book also plays down the importance of MBAs, sometimes actively disparaging them. I am sure it has good reasons to do that. Nevertheless, to judge a degree by few of its people is unfair. To judge all lawyers by example of ambulance chasers would not present a very pretty picture. Similarly, an MBA can prove to be a potent catalyst depending upon the experience, orientation and calibre of an individual. It can help a person to take a more comprehensive view of a business and develop a broader outlook. Nothing can replace a Level-5 mentor, provided one has the inclination to learn. All the same, an MBA can have its own utility and accelerate the process of learning. Even for entrepreneurs, it can help to make the journey to independence smoother.

The book is written brilliantly, but it is still a research. It is definitely not a brand new idea and builds upon previous works in similar direction. The real world examples provide wealth of useful data. The interpretations of the data is reasonably good, and would prove to be more useful if read in conjunction with the history of one of the mentioned visionary companies and in knowledge of earlier works in management theory.