Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don'tThe 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 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 For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins.