Mavericks at Work, by William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre

I generally rate business book by two factors: How many pages I've highlighted by folding them over and whether it causes me to stop and think about how the content applies to my world.  Mavericks at Work scores very high on both points.

Here are some of the more interesting excerpts I flagged as I read this one:

Southwest didn't flourish just because its fares were cheaper...Southwest flourished because it reimagined what it means to be an airline.

If you want to renew and re-energize an industry...don't hire people from that industry.

If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would really miss you and why?

The most effective leaders are the ones who are the most insatiable learners, and experienced leaders learn the most by interacting with people whose interests, backgrounds and experiences are the least like theirs.

We must begin all things in ignorance...otherwise we never start at the beginning.

The next frontier for making products more emotional is to turn them into something social -- to create a sense of shared ownership and participation among customers themselves.

Why would great people want to work here?

You could (and probably should!) spend hours thinking about the answers to those two questions (If your company went out of business... and Why would great people want to work here?).  I also found the authors' thoughts on the use of ad-hoc teams to build new products/services within an existing business, and thereby avoid The Innovator's Dilemma, to be very helpful.

The authors have a very readable style and provide loads of examples from companies and executives they interviewed for the book.  Highly recommended.

Comments

[Marc Orchant]

Thanks for the recommendation Joe! I ordered a copy as soon as I read your post. I'm now halfway through the book and, like you, I've dog-eared so many pages I'm thinking it might have been better to bend the corner of the pages I didn't need to refer back to! Great stuff.