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，著名商业畅销书作家。柯林斯早年在斯坦福大学商学院从事教学与研究工作，并获得杰出教学奖。1996年，他回到家乡科罗拉多州的博尔德市，创办了自己的管理实验室，与各种企业和社会机构的领导人一起开展对商业生活的研究。曾在默克公司、星巴克、时代明镜集团、麦肯锡公司等世界知名公司任高级经理和CEO。他的另一本书《从优秀到卓越》也是公认的一部经典商业著作，被《福布斯》评为20世纪20本最佳商业畅销书，盘踞亚马逊畅销书排行榜数年，畅销不衰。他的著作被《财富》、《经济学人》、《商业周刊》、《今日美国》等杂志广泛报道，引起巨大反响。