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Q: don't any high-technology companies appear in the study set
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| Q: don't any high-technology companies appear in the study set Most technology companies were eliminated from consideration because are not old enough to show the good-to-great pattern. We required at least thirty years of history to consider a company for the study (fifteen years of good results followed by fifteen years of great results. Of the technology companies that did have more than thirty years of history, none showed the specific good-to-great pattern we were looking for. Intel, for example, never had a period of only good performance Intel has been great. If this study were to be repeated in tenor twenty years, I would fully expect that high-technology companies would make the list. Q: How does Good to Great apply to companies that are already great I suggest that use both Good to Great and Built to Last to help them better understand why they are great, so that can keep doing the right things. As Robert Burgelman, one of my favorite professors from Stanford Business School, taught me years ago, "The single biggest danger in business and life, other than outright failure, is to be successful without being resolutely clear about why you are successful in the first place" Q: How do you explain recent difficulties at some of the good-to-great companies? Every company-no matter how great-faces difficult times. There are no enduring great companies that have a perfect, unblemished record. They all have ups and downs. The critical factor is not the absence of difficulty but the ability bounce back and emerge stronger. Furthermore, if any company ceases to practice all of the findings, it will eventually slide backward. It is not anyone variable in isolation that makes a company great it is the combination of all of the pieces working together in an integrated package consistently and overtime. Two current cases illustrate this point. One current case for concern is Gillette, which produced eighteen years of exceptional performance-rising to overtimes the market from 1980 to but stumbled in 1999. We believe the principal source of this difficulty lies in Gillette's need for greater discipline in sticking to businesses that fit squarely inside the three circles of its Hedgehog Concept. Of even greater concern is the clamoring from industry analysts that Gillette needs a charismatic CEO from outside the company to come in and shake things up. If Gillette brings in a Level 4 leader, then the probability that Gillette will prove to bean enduring great company will diminish considerably. Another troubling case is Nucor, which hit its peak in 1994 at fourteen times the market, then fell off considerably as it experienced management turmoil in the wake of Ken Iverson's retirement. Iverson's chosen successor |