Business Directories and Resources

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

• Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
• The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
• A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
• The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Discover why apartment houses are the best investment in today's real estate market

The key to making big profits in real estate is to go against the traditional wisdom. When the masses are buying, it's often time to sell. When everyone is selling, there are huge bargains to be found. In Multi-Family Millions, contrarian real estate investor Dave Lindahl shows you how to read the market cycle, and explains why now is a great time to get started investing in apartment houses—even if it's your first time investing in real estate and you have no money for a down payment.

With a simple two- to five-unit multi-family property, or a thirty-unit apartment building, you can implement the same strategies Lindahl used in over 500 deals to build his own real estate fortune:

• How to reposition a multi-family property for maximum profit

• Where to get the money for your first deal

• How to own an apartment house and never deal with tenants

• Ten bad mistakes rehabbers make

• Three proven principles for attracting great deals on multi-family properties

• When and how to resell for huge profits

Conventional wisdom says real estate investors should start with single-family houses. Discover why it's easier and much more profitable to invest in multi-families!