Synopsis Educational institutions experience growth and development or decay and degeneration with the change of leadership at the top. This everyday experience is strongly corroborated by empirical research. Growth and development of institutions are often incidental depending upon the knack of the person in leadership position, rather than a planned strategic management. The valiant efforts of leaders often go uncelebrated. Without documentation and dissemination, their important experiences remain only a tacit knowledge; and the potential science of institution building remains unknown. This is one of the pioneering attempts to document the experiences of those who built institutions; and the way they experienced it. The book contains a series of case studies of schools, colleges, regional institutes, national institutions and institutions of national importance that experience meteoric rise in a short span of time; the common and cutting theme is the process of institution building. Also this is the first serious effort to construct alternative paradigms of leadership and institution building based on relevant experiences of Indian institutions. Coming from the hands of a reputed scholar who has himself been an institution builder and researcher of international repute, it is a unique contribution to the professional literature on leadership and institution building. Institution builders, researchers, and all those with serious interest in education, in the process of institution building will find the book useful, interesting, and educative.