Collins was intrigued by this question. His research group promptly went to work searching for companies that had experienced a turning point from flat performance to a sustained (15 year minimum) period of spectacular market beating growth. Each of the eleven companies selected for study had achieved returns at least four times greater than the general market while also maintaining higher returns than its competitors.

These good to great companies have a variety of common factors:
Leadership: Diligent, results-driven executives who are surprising humble.
Strategy: Highly-focused on being the best at only one thing. Most companies took several years to achieve this focus by considering these three questions: What are we deeply passionate about? What can we be the best in the world at? What drives our economic engine?
Honest Assessment: The most successful companies analyzed their successes and failures and didn't "sugar-coat" mistakes.
The Right People: The author sums it up best, "People are not your most important asset. The right people are."

Culture of Discipline: Each company had the discipline to maintain strategic focus.
Smart Use of Technology: Successful companies used technology to accelerate and enable their achievements, but did not consider technology to be a primary driver of results.

I suggest that you read Collins book as soon as possible. In addition to providing recommendations to help your own company grow, it may also help your portfolio grow as you predict which are the next companies to make the transition from "good to great."

With the help of a large research team, Collins used a rigorous selection process that identified 11 companies showing a transition from a 15 year period of stock returns no better than 1.25 times the general market to a 15 year period of stock returns more than 3 times the general market. These companies, which included the likes of Gillette and Philip Morris, were then subjected to detailed analysis and compared with similar companies that failed to make the leap to greatness, and even with some companies that made the initial leap only to fall back. "Good to Great" represents the condensed findings of this massive research project, with a range of findings from the logical to the startling that make this book essential reading for anybody in business.

Avoiding fancy jargon, Collins writes in a clear, concise style that uses effective analogies to get his points across. For example, Aesop's fable of the fox and the hedgehog is turned to good effect to contrast those companies that look sleek and skillful but ultimately fail, with those that look more unassuming but know one big thing that ensures their success.

Perhaps the most shocking finding regards styles of leadership, with the great-to-good companies being led by quiet, modest, self-effacing CEOs who combine professional will with personal humility and typically come from within the company -- a marked contrast with the messianic, high-profile CEO who claims to know all the answers.

This is a great book of its kind, but it misses the main point. Underneath all the positive and disciplined thinking favoured by Collins, is the simple metaphysical fact that too much business is killing our planet. Greater efficieny in business merely speeds up our manipulation by materialism, unleashing the uncontrollable economic cycles of growth that will finally chew up our hapless globe till it is reduced to an overpopulated and overexpolited travesty of greed, materialism, and subjection of the human spirit in the name of business efficiency.