Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win - Hardcover

Taylor, William C.; LaBarre, Polly G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060779616 ISBN 13: 9780060779610

Publisher: William Morrow, 2006

Synopsis

The first book to document this change, Mavericks at Work is business "edutainment" for a smart, ambitious readership, profiling some of the most exciting—and often eccentric—CEOs in the United States, while detailing their remarkable strategies for success.

Who’s going to write the next chapter in the saga of American business? Who’s going to chronicle the best way to compete, the new way to win? That’s the mission of Mavericks at Work, a book that profiles a network of rebels who are creating a new business model that makes use of fresh principles and captures what it means to be a state-of-the-art organization. Including such pioneering companies as ING Direct, Southwest Airlines, Pixar, HBO, Anthropologie, Craigslist, Netflix, and Commerce Bank, this book is nothing short of a lively new intellectual agenda for business.

About this title

About the Authors

William C. Taylor is a cofounder of Fast Company and coauthor (with Polly LaBarre) of Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win. A graduate of Princeton University and the MIT Sloan School of Management, he hosts a blog on being "Practically Radical" on HarvardBusiness Online. He lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife and two daughters.

Polly LaBarre spent eight years as a senior editor of Fast Company, where she wrote articles on strategy, creativity, and personal success, and co-hosted the magazine's Real Time conferences. She has spoken to business audiences around the world and has appeared on Good Morning America, CNBC, and PBS's Nightly Business Report.

From the Back Cover

Meet the innovators and upstarts who are inventing the future of business. Their unconventional ideas and groundbreaking strategies can become your business plan for the twenty-first century—a better way to lead, compete, and succeed.

Business as usual is a bust. In industry after indus-try, the old guard is cutting back and losing ground. Meanwhile, organizations that were once dismissed as upstarts, as wildcards—or mavericks—are making waves and growing fast. There is a reason: In an age of hypercompetition and nonstop innovation, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something truly original.

That's the lesson behind the companies, executives, and entrepreneurs you'll meet in Mavericks at Work.They are winning big in business by rethinking the logic of how business gets done. They have devised exciting new answers to the timeless challenges facing organizations of every size and leaders in every field: how you make strategy, how you unleash new ideas, how you connect with customers, how your best people achieve great results.

Who are these mavericks? They are break-the-mold business units inside giants such as IBM and Procter & Gamble, as well as high-profile innovators such as HBO and Pixar. They are Internet banks and gold mines, fashion retailers and advertising agencies, funky sandwich shops and hard-charging computer programmers. Together, they are creating an inspiring agenda that every business can put to work.

Their success demonstrates that:

• Being different makes all the difference
• Sharing values beats selling value
• The company with the smartest customers wins
• Nobody is as smart as everybody
• Character counts for as much as credentials
• Great leaders are insatiable learners

Whether you're a young professional setting out on your career, a senior executive looking to make your organization grow, or an entrepreneur building a company from scratch, Mavericks at Work will help you think bigger, aim higher, and win more decisively.

Reviews

A collection of case studies featuring the same formulaic ebullience endemic to business books since blurber Tom Peters' seminal work In Search of Excellence, this reader from FastCompany magazine cofounder Taylor and influential business writer LaBarre profiles some of the more interesting companies doing business today: Cirque de Soleil, Commerce Bank, Pixar, Anthropologie, Southwest Airlines, Jones Soda, Apple Computer and Craigslist among them. Such companies may have disparate cultures, but what unites them is originality, self-knowledge and passion. Whether by remaining small, recruiting zealously, or functioning like a kind of cult, such businesses succeed by imbuing the corporate rank and file with an entrepreneur's vision, avoiding the twin vices of mediocrity and complacency. Conversational but rigorous, Taylor and Labarre's chipper exploration of imagination at work holds value for novice and journeyman business leaders.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Although the title sounds like a self-help guide to the dysfunctionally employed, the aim of this book is actually to challenge business leaders to think bigger and aim higher. Those are certainly not new challenges, so what makes this book different from all the others that encourage entrepreneurs to "break the mold"? The authors have identified positive developments in a business environment that is struggling to emerge from slow growth, dashed expectations, and corporate scandal. Although they show how big-name innovators such as HBO, IBM, and Proctor & Gamble are finding new ways to stand out, a new breed is emerging that is proving that smarter can beat bigger. Companies such as Netflix, Google, and craigslist really are reinventing the wheel and have caused the business community to stand up and notice. The authors' vision is that these new innovators, once dismissed as upstarts, hold the key to reinstituting business as a source of inspiration and progress, creating a path for others to follow. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060779616
• ISBN 13: 9780060779610
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336