Jim Collins follows up his original book, Built to Last, Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, with an even more enlightening book that identifies and evaluates what allows only a small fraction of Fortune 500 companies to make the transition of merely good companies to truly great companies.  'Great,' as Collins defines it, is sustained exceptional growth that exceeds the market average, according to a number of metrics.  Using these criteria, Collins and his research team exhaustively catalogued published articles and conducted in-depth interviews with various members of the businesses in hopes to understand what made these companies stand out from the rest of the business world.  

The resulting data is presented in Good to Great in simple and compelling detail. Over the course of the first eight chapters, Collins addresses a number of leadership, cultural, personnel, operational practices, behaviors, and attitudes that are the basis for what is needed for a company to transition from good-to-great.  The overarching theme throughout his findings is 'Discipline'.  Specifically he states that Greatness is about creating a Culture of Disciplined, as defined by "Disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who take disciplined action."

Finally, in the final chapter of the book, Collins brings together the findings of the two research projects that became both Good to Great and Built to Last.