Decline can be avoided. Decline can be detected. Decline can be reversed. Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course? In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins’ research project—more than four years in duration—uncovered five step-wise stages of decline: Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom. Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover. Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. But, as Collins’ research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover—in some cases, coming back even stronger—even after having crashed into the depths of Stage 4. Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our history, or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

吉姆·柯林斯，著名商業暢銷書作傢。柯林斯早年在斯坦福大學商學院從事教學與研究工作，並獲得傑齣教學奬。1996年，他迴到傢鄉科羅拉多州的博爾德市，創辦瞭自己的管理實驗室，與各種企業和社會機構的領導人一起開展對商業生活的研究。曾在默剋公司、星巴剋、時代明鏡集團、麥肯锡公司等世界知名公司任高級經理和CEO。他的另一本書《從優秀到卓越》也是公認的一部經典商業著作，被《福布斯》評為20世紀20本最佳商業暢銷書，盤踞亞馬遜暢銷書排行榜數年，暢銷不衰。他的著作被《財富》、《經濟學人》、《商業周刊》、《今日美國》等雜誌廣泛報道，引起巨大反響。