BO BURLINGHAM

It''s widely accepted in business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year - but bigger is not necessarily better. In Small Giants, journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable privately held companies, from a brewery to a record label, that chose a different path to success. These organizations quietly rejected the pressure of endless growth, deciding to focus more on satisfying business goals - being the best at what they do, creating a stimulating place to work, providing perfect customer service and making important contributions to their communities. But what are the magic ingredients that make these companies unique? Why and how does their approach work in such widely varying industries? And what lessons can we learn from them? A fresh, inspirational guide to business strategy, Small Giants will help any entrepeneur consider new directions to make their company great

Its widely accepted in business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year - but bigger is not necessarily better. In Small Giants, journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable privately held companies, from a brewery to a record label, that chose a different path to success. These organizations quietly rejected the pressure of endless growth, deciding to focus more on satisfying business goals - being the best at what they do, creating a stimulating place to work, providing perfect customer service and making important contributions to their communities.But what are the magic ingredients that make these companies unique? Why and how does their approach work in such widely varying industries? And what lessons can we learn from them? A fresh, inspirational guide to business strategy, Small Giants will help any entrepeneur consider new directions to make their company great.

How maverick companies have passed up the growth treadmill and focused on greatness instead.Its an axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, a small number of companies have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great customer service, making great contributions to their communities, and finding great ways to lead their lives.In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable companies that have chosen to march to their own drummer. They include Anchor Brewing, the original microbrewer; CitiStorage Inc., the premier independent records-storage business; Clif Bar & Co., maker of organic energy bars and other nutrition foods; Righteous Babe Records, the record company founded by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco; Union Square Hospitality Group, the company of restaurateur Danny Meyer; and Zingermans Community of Businesses, including the world-famous Zingermans Deli of Ann Arbor.Burlingham shows how the leaders of these small giants recognized the full range of choices they had about the type of company they could create. And he shows how we can all benefit by questioning the usual definitions of business success. In his new afterward, Burlingham reflects on the similarities and learning lessons from the small giants he covers in the book.

Too many start-ups dont make the grade - what makes a successful business take off?Starting a new business is exciting, but there are many traps for the unwary. Some would-be entrepreneurs stick so firmly to their step-by-step guides that they dont see whats really going on. Others become so obsessed with potential problems they lose sight of the bigger picture. What they really need, according to serial entrepreneur Norm Brodsky, is a mindset that will help them to stay focussed on the real goals and grab opportunities whenever they arise. He calls it the knack. Its helped him to build eight phenomenally successful companies, and in this book he uses stories of real companies facing real challenges to show you how to develop it too.

Bo Burlingham, the bestselling author of Small Giants, returns with Finish Big, an original guide to exiting your company successfully and gracefully.No two exit experiences are exactly alike. Some people wind up happy with the process and satisfied with the way it turned out, while others look back on it as a nightmare. The question I hope to answer in this book is why. What did the people with good exits do differently from those whod had bad exits?Bo Burlinghams first book Small Giants became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem: how to handle the pressure to grow. Now he is back to tackle an even more common problem: how to exit your company well.Sooner or later, all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated. Whatever your preferred outcome, if you start planning for it while you still have time and options, you can build a stronger, more resilient company with a higher market value. Unfortunately, most dont - and they pay a steep price for their procrastination.Through dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs across a range of industries, Burlingham identifies eight key factors that determine whether owners leave their businesses happily. He showcases the insights, exits and cautionary tales of entrepreneurs across an array of industries including manufacturing, food and services. Finish Big is an illuminating and inspirational guide to one of the most stressful, and yet potentially rewarding, processes business owners must go through.Bo Burlingham is the author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, a finalist for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year in 2006. An editor at large at Inc., he has reported on the entrepreneurial revolution in America since the early 1980s and has witnessed up close the birth and development of the companies that have reshaped our world.

"One is tempted to say the only book youll need on starting a business. Brilliant! Genius! Choose your superlative-itll fit."-Tom Peters People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran company-builder Norm Brodsky, theres a mentality that helps street- smart entrepreneurs solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise. Brodsky shares his hard-earned wisdom every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular "Street Smarts" column he cowrites with Bo Burlingham. Now theyve adapted their best advice into a comprehensive guide for anyone running a small business.

The First Management Classic of the New Millennium!A bold experiment is taking place these days, as leading-edge companies turn upside down the management paradigm that has dominated corporate thinking for more than one hundred years. Southwest Airlines is perhaps the most visible practitioner, soaring through economic downturns while its competitors slash their budgets and order massive layoffs, but you can find other pioneers of the new approach in almost every industry and market niche. Their secret: a culture of ownership that allows them to tap into the most underutilized resource in business todaynamely, the enthusiasm, intelligence, and creativity of working people everywhere.No one knows more about building a culture of ownership than CEO Jack Stack, whos been working on one for the past twenty years with his colleagues at SRC Holdings Corporation (formerly Springfield ReManufacturing Corporation). Along the way, theyve turned their company into what Business Week has called a management Mecca, attracting thousands of people representing hundreds of businesses to SRCs home in Springfield, Missouri. There the visitors learn how to incorporate the ideals and values of SRCs remarkable corporate culture into their own organizationsand then they go back and do it.Now, in A Stake in the Outcome, Stack offers a master class on creating a culture of ownership, presenting the hard-won lessons of his own twenty-year journey and explaining what it really takes to build for long-term success. The pioneer of open-book management (described in the best-selling classic The Great Game of Business), Stack and twelve other managers began their journey in 1982, when they purchased their factory from its struggling parent company. SRC grew 15 percent a year, while adding almost a thousand new jobs, and the companys stock price rocketed from 10 cents to $81.60 per share. In the process, Stack discovered that long-term success required constant innovationand that building a culture of ownership involved much more than paying bonuses, handing out stock options, or setting up an employee stock ownership plan. In a successful ownership culture, every employee had to take the fate of the company as personally as an individual owner would. Achieving that level of commitment was extraordinarily difficult, but Stack realized that the payoff would be enormous: a company that was consistently able to outperform the market.A Stake in the Outcome isnt about theoryits about practice. Stack draws from his own successes and failures at SRC to show how any company can teach its employees to think and act like owners, including how to implement an effective equity-sharing program, how to promote continuous learning at every level of the organization, how to fire up employees competitive juices, how to broaden the concept of leadership and delegate responsibility for the business, and how to build a workforce that is fast on its feet and ready to take advantage of every opportunity. Youll also learn about other companies that have succeeded in building cultures of ownershipand the lessons they can teach the rest of us.Written in Jack Stacks straightforward, witty, no-beating-around-the-bush style, A Stake in the Outcome is like having a one-on-one session with a master entrepreneur and business innovator. It shows managers and ...