Jim Collins

The forever quotable business researcher

PublishedDecember 1, 2020
CategoryManagement · Organizational Behavior
Reading time9 min read
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Intro

In the late 1980s, James C. “Jim” Collins began his career as a researcher at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.1 Today, he is recognized as an expert in business management, as well as company growth and sustainability. With several publications to his name, Collins’ bestselling novels have fascinated readers outside of his target audience, which is primarily those working in management positions. Known as one of the world’s leading minds in business, Collins has had tremendous influence over the business world and has succeeded in sparking the interest of casual readers as well.

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Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.


– Jim Collins in Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

About the Authors

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Dan Pilat

Managing Director

Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.

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Dr. Sekoul Krastev

Managing Director & Co-Founder

Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.

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I was blown away with their application and translation of behavioral science into practice. They took a very complex ecosystem and created a series of interventions using an innovative mix of the latest research and creative client co-creation. I was so impressed at the final product they created, which was hugely comprehensive despite the large scope of the client being of the world's most far-reaching and best known consumer brands. I'm excited to see what we can create together in the future.

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