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BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company - Hardcover | Diverse Reads

BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company

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From Jim Collins, the most influential business thinker of our era, comes an ambitious upgrade of his classic, Beyond Entrepreneurship, that includes all-new findings and world-changing insights.

What's the roadmap to create a company that not only survives its infancy but thrives, changing the world for decades to come?

Nine years before the publication of his epochal bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins and his mentor, Bill Lazier, answered this question in their bestselling book, Beyond Entrepreneurship.

Beyond Entrepreneurship left a definitive mark on the business community, influencing the young pioneers who were, at that time, creating the technology revolution that was birthing in Silicon Valley. Decades later, successive generations of entrepreneurs still turn to the strategies outlined in Beyond Entrepreneurship to answer the most pressing business questions.

BE 2.0 is a new and improved version of the book that Jim Collins and Bill Lazier wrote years ago. In BE 2.0, Jim Collins honors his mentor, Bill Lazier, who passed away in 2005, and reexamines the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship with his 2020 perspective.

The book includes the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship, as well as four new chapters and fifteen new essays. BE 2.0 pulls together the key concepts across Collins' thirty years of research into one integrated framework called The Map. The result is a singular reading experience, which presents a unified vision of company creation that will fascinate not only Jim's millions of dedicated readers worldwide, but also introduce a new generation to his remarkable work.

ISBN-13: 9780399564239

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Publication Date: 12-01-2020

Pages: 352

Product Dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

Jim Collins has produced a succession of transformative leadership books, notably Good to Great, Built to Last, How the Mighty Fall, and Great by Choice, which form the centerpiece of every leadership library around the world. Jim Collins himself has become the world's leading thinker on what makes great companies tick, and a Socratic advisor to CEOs and leaders worldwide.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

When Bill Lazier and I co-authored the original edition of Beyond Entrepreneurship, based on the course we both taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, we set out to create a road map for leaders of small to mid-sized enterprises who want to build enduring great companies.

Bill embodied a rare combination of practical experience and academic reflection, and Beyond Entrepreneurship encapsulated much of his accumulated wisdom. And while I’d go on to author or co-author multiple New York Times and Wall Street Journal best sellers on the topic of what makes great companies tick, many leaders have told me that this very first book remains their favorite. When Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, introduced me at a gathering for KIPP Schools in 2014, he surprised me by saying that when he was a young entrepreneur, he’d read Beyond Entrepreneurship six times. When Netflix won the Stanford ENCORE Award for the most entrepreneurial company, Hastings gave a piece of advice to aspiring young CEOs: “Memorize the first eighty-six pages of Beyond Entrepreneurship.” Through Beyond Entrepreneurship, Bill became a mentor to entrepreneurs whom he’d never meet, inspiring them to strive to build truly great companies that can long endure.

But why create a re-release of Beyond Entrepreneurship, and why now? I decided to re-release Beyond Entrepreneurship as BE 2.0 for three reasons.

First, I’m still fiercely passionate about entrepreneurs and leaders of small to mid-sized companies, whom I’ve always seen as the readers I most want to reach. This might surprise readers of my later books in which I’d researched companies that had become huge. But the eventual size of those companies obscures the fact that all the companies studied for books like Built to Last, Good to Great, and Great by Choice were once small start-ups, and I researched their entire histories all the way back to their beginnings. I devoted much of my curiosity to understanding why some early-stage companies became great and lasting, and why others didn’t.

Second, I had substantial new material that could be directly useful to today’s entrepreneurs and leaders of small to mid-sized companies. This new material, about people decisions, leadership, vision, strategy, luck, and more, found the right home in a re-release of Beyond Entrepreneurship. As you move through this book, think of it like a classic old home that has had a major addition. The new material appears in entirely new chapters and “insert essays” spread throughout the book, which are called out with the header “Jim’s View from 2020.” Nearly half of the text that follows is entirely new to the 2020 edition. I have, however, left the text of the original chapters fully intact as Bill and I wrote them in 1992 (with only a few corrections and minor adjustments). The original text appears throughout with a shaded backdrop.

Third, and most important, this re-release is meant to honor and extend the legacy of my co-author, the greatest mentor in my life, Bill Lazier. Without his shaping hand, I would not be who I am, and my life would not be what it is. When Bill passed away in 2004, I wanted to write something about him and the profound impact he had on people. Immediately following this introduction to BE 2.0, I share the story of Bill and what I learned from this wise and generous soul, a man who altered the lives of thousands of young people.

I hope BE 2.0 helps you create an iconic company. Even more, I hope some of Bill’s mentorship carries from these pages to live on through you and those you lead.

Jim Collins
Boulder, Colorado
March 2, 2020

Table of Contents

Introduction: What is BE 2.0 ix

1 Jim's View from 2020: Bill and Me 1

2 Jim's View from 2020: Great Vision without Great People is Irrelevant 13

3 Leadership Style 38

Jim's View from 2020 Just What Exactly Is "Leadership"? 42

Jim's View from 2020 What Cause Do You Serve? 49

Jim's View from 2020 Good Decisions, Right Timeline 58

Jim's View from 2020 Don't Confuse Empowerment with Detachment 71

4 Vision 90

Jims View from 2020 Purpose Beyond Profits-Don't Confuse Rare with New 113

Jim's View from 2020 Bhags, Bhags Everywhere 123

Jim's View from 2020 Putting It All Together-DPR Construction and its "Constitutional Convention" for Greatness 133

5 Jim's View from 2020: Luck Favors the Persistent 139

6 Jim's View from 2020: What Makes Great Companies Tick-the Map 148

7 Strategy 171

Jim's View from 2020 The Essence of Strategy 183

Jim's View from 2020 If You Cannot Control Prices, You Must Control Costs 200

8 Innovation 217

Jim's View from 2020 Creativity is the Easy Part 263

9 Tactical Excellence 265

Jim's View from 2020 Deadlines: Freedom in a Framework 267

Jim's View from 2020 SMAC Mindset 271

Jim's View from 2020 Expectations 277

Jim's View from 2020 Tactical Bhags 279

Jim's View from 2020 Make People Opurs 300

Acknowledgments 303

Preface to the Original Edition 307

Notes to Chapters 311

Index 327