Jim Collins, a prominent management scholar and author, shaped the landscape of the business world through his extensive research and insightful writings. His most notable contributions are Built to Last and Good to Great. Born on January 25, 1958, in Boulder, Colorado, Collins earned his Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Sciences from Stanford University in 1980, marking the beginning of his professional journey (“Jim Collins.” Leaders).

His post-collegiate career commenced at McKinsey & Co., where, during an 18-month tenure, Collins encountered a research project initiated by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, which was later transformed into the influential work In Search of Excellence (Lenzner, Robert. “Good to Great.” Forbes, May 2003).

Collins returned to Stanford to pursue his master’s degree in business administration, which he earned in 1983 (“Jim Collins”). Afterward, he assumed the role of a project manager at Hewlett-Packard (Lenzner). However, after 18 months, he resigned, vowing “never to work for a company again” (Lenzner). Subsequently, in 1988, Collins revisited Stanford, this time as an entrepreneurship teacher at the business school (Lenzner).

A collaboration emerged when Jerry Porras, a tenured professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, noticed Collins’s article on enduring company success, which mirrored Porras’s own research (Collins, Jim and Porras, Jerry.