title: The Myth of Excellence: Why Great Companies Never Try to Be the Best at Everything
author: Fred Crawford
description: Crawford and Mathews, marketing consultants with Cap Gemini Ernst &amp; Young (CGEY) and FirstMatter, respectively, break down marketing into five attributes: access, experience, price, product, and service. They argue that successful businesses are those that excel in one of these areas, are good in another, and are at least average in the rest. Wal-Mart, they say, is dominant on price and maintains a good selection of products, while Target excels at product selection and makes price its secondary attribute. The authors conclude that it is both uneconomical and probably impossible to be excellent in all areas. After describing the importance of the five key attributes, the authors explain how a company might evaluate itself to see how well it is doing. The authors' clear writing style and copious use of examples and case studies make their ideas understandable to a wide readership. The book is essential for all academic marketing collections, and it would also be useful in all but the smallest public libraries. Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA <br />Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: Good to Great by Jim Collins
  
  
  
  
  
  Leadership Book Summary by LTC John O’Brien
  
  
  
  
  
  Introduction
  
  
  
  
  
  The Challenge: Collin’s previous book, Built to Last, is the defining
  management study of the nineties, which showed how great companies triumph
  over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the
  DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. 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: 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 15 years.
  
  
  How great? After the leap, the good-to-great 