Built for Change

Book excerpt: This book provides an insider's view of how today's blockbuster companies arrived at the top and explains how your business can do the same—in good economies or bad. How—and why—did revolutionary companies like Google, Apple, Cisco, and Southwest Airlines come about? The growth and success of such companies seems extraordinary, if not impossible, yet it has happened repeatedly despite the advance and proliferation of businesses to the point where it would seem that "everything's already been done." It's the specific business plans and mindsets of the people behind these rare "transformative" companies that enable these stunning achievements. In Built for Change: Essential Traits of Transformative Companies, the author reveals what distinguishes these unique enterprises from the multitudes striving for success in a fiercely competitive world. This book will fascinate and benefit small business owners, entrepreneurs, and CEOs of large corporations, as well as venture capitalists, institutional fund managers, angel investors, and university professors and business students. Readers will learn how to spot transformative companies as they develop and how they can apply the principles behind businesses such as Starbucks, Dell, and UPS to their own enterprises.