For my brief review of the book itself, I direct you here.  Here are my initial thoughts on use of the book in the class:

• Good to Great is about far more than business: The first problem I had using excerpts from the book in the class’s weekly reading was that none of the students were business majors.  Most were sociology and government majors, and few of them seemed to appreciate the idea of Good to Great being more than a business book.  I stressed to them what I stressed in my own review: that Collins is writing about great organizations, not necessarily only about great businesses.
• Technology will not save the world: Most of us agree that technology will make the world a better place, but Collins devotes all of Chapter 7 to demonstrating how technology is a tool to make your organizations better, not to give your organizations purpose.  Organizations–be they business, non-profits, or NGOs–must be very clear on their own core purpose before they can hope to make the best use of technology.  One ought not to invest in technology for its own sake, but rather to assist in the achievement of a group’s real mission.
• Economics are important: Coming from a business background, I have often found myself frustrated with the notion of technology as a means to utopia.  We diverged to this topic again in class, but the bottom line is (from my view) that the web is a great balance between the free and open source model of participation and the traditional business model that asks “where are the dollars that keep the wires hot and the servers turned on?”

Bottom line: Good to Great is a wonderful read for anyone who is involved with organization building.  If the non-business students can get past its decidedly business approach, many will find that Collins is particularly insightful, regardless of what kind of organization you are building.  The aspiring entrepreneurs–both financial and moral–are sure to find it useful.  It is, at any rate, a very well written counter-balance to the social-minded impulse of many sociology students.

As I was researching and writing We-Think, it became evident that I could not write a book about collaborative creativity in a traditional way — which is why, with the support of my publishers at Profile, I am releasing the book in draft form before its physical publication, which is planned for summer 2007. Most of the first draft was made available online this week, with the final three or four chapters following over the next few weeks. I hope that by opening up the book to readers’ comments before it hits the bookshops, we can make it a better book. But the real point is to provoke a conversation about the emerging opportunities for us to organise ourselves in more collaborative, creative ways.

If anyone drops in, let me know.  I will get there, eventually…