Small Giants



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Hardcover
224 pages
ISBN 9781591840930 Published Dec. 2005
Portfolio
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Small Giants
Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big
By Bo Burlingham 

Related Blog Posts
THE 2006 FINANCIAL TIMES AND GOLDMAN SACHS BOOK AWARD
Posted Sept. 18, 2006 1:03 p.m. by jack
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog

The shortlist for the 2006 FT/Goldman Sachs book award has been announced. Here are the award criteria:

THE MISSION

"To identify the book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics."

What I personally like about the mission statement is the use of the word enjoyable That term is missing from far too many business books.

Here is the list in random order:

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson published by Hyperion

Review of The Long Tail by Steve Sherlock

David Thomson's Review of The Long Tail

Jack Covert Selects: The Long Tail

Catherine Doyle's Review of The Long Tail

BEA - Chris Anderson and The Long Tail

The Long Tail Videos

Kawasaki on The Long Tail

Small Giants by Bo Burlingham published by Portfolio

Bill and Bo on Small Giants

Podcast from Bo Burlingham

The Small Giants Ofiicial Book Site

The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman published by Penguin Press

A collection of various posts

Charles Fishman/The Wal-Mart Effect Interview

Where the book started in Fast Company December 2003

Fishman and a Washington Post write walk around Wal-Mart

January 2006 story adapted from the book called "The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart"

China Shakes the World by James Kynge published by Houghton Mifflin

Review from Challenge Forum

A review from the last British governor of Hong Kong

The Box by Marc Levinson published by Princeton University Press

Jack Covert Selects -- The Box

The Economist review

What I have done is put all the content we have posted about these books so you can have all the information in one place.

This is a superb list of very readable, extremely well written books that could change your outlook of the world. Read them.



Two Book Webinars this Thursday
Posted May 9, 2006 10:16 a.m. by tom-ehrenfeld
In General Management - 800 CEO Read Blog

On May 11 at noon Eastern time, Bo Burlingham will be leading an online discussion on his book Small Giants. Get all the details here.

And on that same day, at 1:00 PM Eastern, I will be hosting a webinar on the topic of how leaders implement change, as illustrated in the book The Gold Mine. Click here to learn more and to register.

Both events are free to participants.



Bill and Bo on Small Giants
Posted March 8, 2006 2:47 a.m. by tom-ehrenfeld
In Small Business - 800 CEO Read Blog

I would love Small Giants even if I didn't know the author, Bo Burlingham. After all, Burlingham has been the co-author of several of the best business books of the past two decades, The Great Game of Business and A Stake in the Outcome, not to mention the force behind the editing and writing of literally hundreds of important articles for Inc. magazine.

As Burlingham said at a recent reading/discussion for Small Giants, "This book challenges people to think about what makes a great company." How? He focuses on 14 dynamic companies that all made conscious decisions not to growbut rather to control their size so as to concentrate on more important matters such as the soul of the company, the ties to the community, the community of employees, the quality of the work. In so doing the companies retained that quality of charisma that makes them so attractiveand which in turn drives so many great companies to make bad choices when faced with the tradeoffs from growth.

The huge crowd included Fast Company Founding Editor Bill Taylor, who posed Bo a provocative question. Bill (who recently completed a book of his own that will be published later this year) kindly shared his question, which follows. And Bo has been good enough to reply.


Here's Bill Taylor's question: It's easy to understand what your small giants gain by choosing not to grow as fast as they might. But did many of the entrepreneurs you chronicle--or did you yourself--think about what these companies give up by staying small? I'm not thinking about money, I'm thinking about impact--the chance to have a big effect on the world. Imagine if Herb Kelleher of Southwest had decided to stick to flying routes within the southwest. Or if John Mackey, the cofounder of Whole Foods Market, had decided to stop at a couple of stores in Austin, rather than spread across the country--and, in so doing, raise the bar for nutritional standards, the treatment of animals, the future of organics. Isn't it almost selfish, in a sense, or at least a missed opportunity, if you're a passionate company-builder who believes in what you're doing and thinks it's important, to do less than what's possible, to have less of an impact than you might have otherwise?

Bo Burlingham replies: First, let me be clear about one thing: In no way do I mean to suggest that a company cant be great if it grows fast, gets big, goes public, does acquisitions, and so forth. The two companies you cite are prime examples of great, publicly traded companies, although its worth noting that they are striking exceptions to the rule. They have been able to resist the pressures to compromise their values only because they have so far managed to deliver consistently great returns to shareholders, who have thus been willing to let the companys management teams operate as they see fit. Most other companies that have started out with similar valuesThe Body Shop, Ben & Jerrys, and People Express come to mindhave eventually been forced to make compromises that have utterly transformed their cultures and ways of doing business.

Its also important to recognize that there are always trade-offs. Although Southwest and Whole Foods are both great corporate citizens, neither one is rooted in a community anymore, and theyve both lost some of the workplace intimacy they had when they were smaller, not to mention the intense relationships with customers and suppliers. My point is simply that there are sacrificeslost opportunitiesno matter what you decide to do. Company owners have to choose which opportunities they want to focus on and which pressures they want to deal with.

That said, it may be true that a couple of the Small Giants owners/leaders have given up an opportunity to have a greater impact on the world by choosing to remain private and closely held and by staying (relatively) small. I say a couple because extremely few people are capable of building a Whole Foods Market or a Southwest Airlines without losing control of the company along the way. In any case, I certainly wouldnt describe the decision to remain small and private as selfish. For one thing, most of these people work extremely hard to make the greatest contribution they can to their employees, their customers, their communities, and the world.. Saying their decision is selfish implies that people who try to get their companies as big as possible, as fast as possible, are somehow being selfless, or at least less selfish. We both know that the motivations of company-builders, even the greatest ones, are far more complicated than that, and that altruism or selflessness seldom enters into the equation.



Bo Burlingham/Small Giants Interview
Posted Feb. 27, 2006 3:16 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Audio - 800 CEO Read Blog

This week, we have a loooong interview with Bo Burlingham. Bo has written a great book called Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big. He also knows a bit about the subject. Bo has been at Inc. since 1983 and reported on small companies. He now serves as the editor-at-large for Inc.

Bo and I went on so long that I have divided the podcast into three segments.

Additional Resources:

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