Built To Last

Built To Last examines what lies behind the extraordinary success of 18 visionary companies and which principles and ideas they’ve used to thrive for a century.

James Altucher would love this. It’s right in line with his theme of becoming an idea machine.

You don’t need a great idea to start a great company. In fact, you don’t need any idea at all.

Why?

Because truly great and visionary companies constantly turn out great ideas, just because they generate so many in the first place.

For example, guess what Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka did, right after founding Sony He held a meeting to brainstorm business ideas. They discussed sweetened bean-paste and mini-golf equipment, among other things.

American Express started as a mail business, Motorola with something very interesting (and soon obsolete) called battery eliminators and even though Apple’s computers were a great success, eventually they would create the most profitable product in history – a phone.

The reason these companies succeeded is that instead of focusing on one idea or one great leader, they focused on the process of coming up with ideas, and producing leaders, either good, or bad.

Being restless and persistent matters much more than having that one in a million idea.

A core ideology consists of two things: a higher purpose and a set of core values.

For example, Walmart’s core ideology is to bring people retail products at the lowest prices, with the greatest customer service.

Apple’s purpose: Think different. They are here to disrupt, to change, to improve. The industry doesn’t matter. They did it with computers, then music, then phones.

One of their values is user-friendly and beautiful design. Notice how these don’t stand in the way of progress. Apple never stopped experimenting. Otherwise they would never have moved from computers to music players.

However, doing something different and making all their products look beautiful are universal principles, which can always be applied.

Your core ideology has to live through all products, employees and times. It doesn’t matter what it contains, but rather that it exists.

If you have no purpose and no principles to hold up high, you’ll never create a vision great enough to attract fellow great minds to help you build it.

So much more than an idea you need a purpose and a set of values.

This was interesting to me, I had never considered it. Since their core ideology doesn’t leave much room for compromises, visionary companies will settle only for the best employees, with the same mindset. The core ideology is something that you either share, or you don’t. There’s nothing in between, which is why new employees either thrive or leave very quickly. For example…