Built to Last identifies 18 "visionary" companies and sets out to determine
what's special about them. To get on the list, a company had to be world famous,
have a stellar brand image, and be at least 50 years old. We're talking about
companies that even a layperson knows to be, well, different: the Disneys, the
Wal-Marts, the Mercks. Whatever the key to the success of these companies, the
key to the success of this book is that the authors don't waste time comparing
them to business failures. Instead, they use a control group of "successful-but-second-rank"
companies to highlight what's special about their 18 "visionary" picks.
Thus Disney is compared to Columbia Pictures, Ford to GM, Hewlett Packard to Texas
Instruments, and so on.