Business Opportunities Weblog

November 8, 2005 by Dane Carlson | 2 Comments

Jim Collins:

The truth is, we love epic adventures that unfold gradually, allowing us to become lost in the people and their stories. From Darth Vader to Harry Potter, from Achilles to Odysseus, from Bilbo to Frodo, there is something primal in our obsession with the multivolume epic. Even in nonfiction, larger-than-life individuals just cannot be stuffed into a single volume. Manchester’s biography of Churchill, Caro’s Johnson, Sandburg’s Lincoln–they hold our attention precisely because they are long enough to do the job.

I began thinking, “Has there ever been a great business trilogy?”

I wanted to find an epic adventure of real people transformed by a hero’s journey. I found only one. It’s the story of a father who builds an empire, a reluctant son who battles against his father before inheriting the empire and taking it to greatness, and a stranger who shows up in the nick of time to save all that the father and son built. It’s a story that spans nine decades and is enmeshed in the sweep of history, from World War I through the Great Depression, World War II, the rise of America, the go-go 1960s, the technology explosion, and the dawn of a new post-September 11 world. The trilogy of IBM–three extraordinary books, each composed by a different author–is populated by characters as bold and daring and ultimately flawed as any in literature, beginning with a fascinating individual who, in middle age, found his life and career shattered.

In Profiles | 2 Comments