Book · 2001
Good to Great
by Jim Collins
Jim Collins studied 1,435 companies to find 11 that leapt from average to elite — the book r/Entrepreneur still recommends even after the methodology got shredded.
What does Reddit think of Good to Great?
r/smallbusiness leads with 8 mentions; r/Entrepreneur adds 5. The peak was 2019, with 6 mentions, and it's appeared every year since except 2022. The ↑140 post on r/Entrepreneur is the most self-aware data point in the set: the commenter calls it the single most transformative book they read early in their career, then immediately acknowledges it doesn't get mentioned much and has received a lot of criticism since publication. That tension — genuine learning, known methodological problems — defines how Reddit handles this book. Other mentions are straight booklist inclusions (↑75, ↑72, ↑26), paired with titles like Zero to One, Shoe Dog, and Rework. Nobody argues the criticism in any detail. Nobody names the companies from Collins's list that subsequently collapsed. The book gets recommended the way a dated-but-useful textbook gets recommended: with a caveat that gets typed and then not followed up on.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · Level 5 leadership and ego subordination
- · The Hedgehog Concept — doing one thing exceptionally
- · Flywheel momentum vs. doom loops
- · Research-based frameworks for sustained organizational performance
Common praise
- + The ↑140 commenter on r/Entrepreneur calls it the single most transformative book they read when starting out, specifically for its leadership and management framing.
- + It appears in r/smallbusiness booklists alongside Shoe Dog and Zero to One — curators treat it as a standard anchor in serious recommendation threads.
Common criticism
- − The ↑140 commenter flags that it doesn't get mentioned much on r/Entrepreneur and has received significant criticism since publication — then recommends it anyway, which tells you something about both the book and the commenter.
- − Several companies Collins highlighted as good-to-great examples later failed or collapsed, a fact the Reddit threads acknowledge but never argue through.
- − The dataset is thin enough (13 mentions) that there's no substantive debate — critics either don't post about this book or don't read it.
Who it's for
Founders and early managers who want a research-backed argument for why leadership style matters more than market conditions. The ↑140 commenter is the target reader in hindsight: someone who read it early, found the Level 5 leadership framing genuinely useful, and learned to hold the methodology's problems separately from the practical lessons. Go in knowing the research has been contested. The book still works as a framework for thinking about discipline and organizational culture — just don't use the company case studies as proof of anything.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for Good to Great?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“**Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss** The most important book on this list. It outlines and reinforces the fact that business, negotiation and any human interaction is inherently very emotional. It’s centered around negotiation but this book has so many solid management and leadership princip…
“Good to Great by Jim Collins was the single most transformative book I read when I was first starting out. It doesn't get mentioned a lot here, and it's since received a lot of criticism since getting published, but there are themes in the book that taught me a lot about leadership and management sp…
“Hey, \- Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer \- Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson \- Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell \- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Some Don’t by Jim Collins \- Zero to One by Peter Thiel \- Shoe Dog by…
“I do not have any direct advise to give. I worked in my family business, F&B industry, when I was younger. I had some ideas but in the end I followed a different career path. In the end my parents retired and each closed / sold their own business. But one book that I found very interesting, and ma…
“'Good to Great', by Jim Collins.
“Don't rush starting a business. You are probably better keeping the money in the markets until you have a good idea and a great partner. Before you do anything with the money, I suggest reading some business books.the two I will suggest are E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and Good to Great by J…
“Good To Great - James Collins $100M offers - Alex Hormozi How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie More recently: 10x is easier than 2x (Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy)
“Here are the ones I aggregated from a couple of places - haven't read all though. Many of these have had really good feedback/upvotes/comments, and therefore I believe make a really good list. ​ **Tranche 1 - without a summary (However, well recommended):** 1. The Black Swan 2. Thinking…
Convinced? Pick up Good to Great
Readers also mention
Books that share discussion threads with Good to Great — counted from the comments, not curated.
The Goal
Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Eli Goldratt's 1984 novel about a plant manager with 90 days to save his factory before corporate shuts it down.
Company of One
Paul Jarvis
Paul Jarvis's argument that staying small on purpose beats chasing growth, cited on r/startups as the book that reframes what a business is allowed to be.
High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove
Andy Grove's Intel management playbook from 1983 — two r/startups commenters call it the book that forced them to stop playing player-coach and start leading.
Principles
Ray Dalio
Ray Dalio turns his hedge fund's internal operating manual into a 500-page life philosophy—and Reddit isn't sure whether to treat it as scripture or autobiography.
The Lean Startup
Eric Ries
Eric Ries tells founders to ship a broken version on purpose, collect data, and repeat until the market stops ignoring them.
The E-Myth Revisited
Michael E. Gerber
Michael Gerber's diagnosis: most small business owners don't own a business — they own a job, and they're the worst boss they've ever had.
Good to Great — frequently asked
Is Good to Great still worth reading given the criticism of Collins's methodology?+
Depends on what you want from it. The ↑140 commenter on r/Entrepreneur acknowledges the criticism directly and still calls it transformative for early-career leadership thinking. If you want validated company research, look elsewhere. If you want a vocabulary for organizational discipline, it still delivers.
What does Reddit think of Good to Great?+
Cautiously positive across 13 mentions in r/smallbusiness (8) and r/Entrepreneur (5). The most upvoted post (↑140) is the most honest: transformative for leadership thinking, rarely mentioned, known to have methodological critics. Other mentions are booklist appearances next to Zero to One and Shoe Dog — solid company, treated as a standard rather than a discovery. Nobody on Reddit runs the numbers on the collapsed case-study companies.
How does Good to Great hold up compared to other business classics Reddit recommends?+
r/smallbusiness slots it into recommendation lists without much ceremony. The ↑140 commenter is notable for being the only one who names the book as personally transformative rather than generically useful. That's a distinction the volume numbers don't capture.
Should I read Good to Great if I run a small business, not a large company?+
The r/smallbusiness data (8 mentions) says yes, small business readers are already finding it useful. The book's research focused on large public companies, but the frameworks — particularly the Hedgehog Concept and flywheel logic — get applied in smaller contexts without much resistance in these threads. The ↑34 commenter on r/smallbusiness finds it one of the most interesting reads regardless of company size.