How maverick companies have passed up the growth treadmill - and focused on greatness instead. It's 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 Zingerman's Community of Businesses, including the world-famous Zingerman's 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 audiobook.

Bo Burlingham's book" Small Giants" became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem - how to handle the pressure to grow. It used deeply researched entrepreneurship stories to provide fresh insight into what really makes a great small business.
Now Burlingham returns with a look at an even more common problem - how to leave your company gracefully. He interviewed dozens of owner who have sold or bequeathed their companies and distilled nine key lessons for success.
For example, Ray Pagano turned down an initial offer for his twenty-eight-year-old company that manufactured housings for security cameras in favor of making the business more efficient and profitable. The effort paid off when he sold his newly improved company at the bottom of a recession for four time the original offer.
Through stories like Pagano's, Burlingham offers an inspirational and enlightening guide through one of the most stressful processes every business owner must face.

In the early 1980s, Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC) in Springfield, Missouri, was a near bankrupt division of International Harvester. Today it's one of the most successful and competitive companies in the United States, with a share price 3000 times what it was thirty years ago. This miracle turnaround is all down to one man, Jack Stack, and his revolutionary system of Open-Book Management, in which every employee understands the company's key figures, can act on them and has a real stake in the business. In Stack's own words: 'When employees think, act and feel like owners ... everybody wins.' As a management strategy, 'the great game of business' is so simple and effective that it's been taken up by companies from Intel to Harley Davidson.

Bo Burlingham, the bestselling author of Small Giants, returns with Finish Big, an original guide to exiting your company successfully and gracefully. "Finish Big is for all those founder/leaders who want to do more than take...it is for the ones who want to leave something behind." Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last "Practical and profound, fast-moving and thought-provoking, masterful in its clear prose and compelling stories- Bo Burlingham has once again done a tremendous service in deploying his craft." Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and co-author of Built to Last and Great by Choice 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 who'd had 'bad' exits?' Bo Burlingham's 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 don't - 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.

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.

"The Great Game of Business" started a business revolution by introducing the world to open-book management, a new way of running a business that created unprecedented profit and employee engagement.
The revised and updated edition of "The Great Game of Business" lays out an entirely different way of running a company. It wasn't dreamed up in an executive think tank or an Ivy League business school or around the conference table by big-time consultants. It was forged on the factory floors of the heartland by ordinary folks hoping to figure out how to save their jobs when their parent company, International Harvester, went down the tubes.
What these workers created was a revolutionary approach to management that has proven itself in every industry around the world for the past thirty years--an approach that is perhaps the last, best hope for reviving the American Dream.

"One is tempted to say 'the only book you'll need on starting a business.' Brilliant! Genius! Choose your superlative-it'll 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, there's 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 they've adapted their best advice into a comprehensive guide for anyone running a small business.

Two of Inc. magazine's hugely popular columnists show how small-business people can deal with all kinds of tricky situations. People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or specific rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran entrepreneur Norm Brodsky, there's a mentality that helps street-smart people solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise. He calls it "the knack," and it has made all the difference to the eight successful start-ups of his career. Brodsky explores this mind-set every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular column he co-writes with journalist and author Bo Burlingham (best known for his acclaimed book Small Giants). In both their column and now their book, they tell stories about real companies facing real challenges, and show readers how to apply "the knack" to their own businesses. Brodsky and Burlingham offer essential advice such as: Follow the numbers-that's the best way to spot problems before they become life threatening Keep focusing on your real goal--it's amazingly easy to get sidetracked by secondary concerns Don't get so close to the problem that you lose all perspective Brodsky and Burlingham prove that street smarts and business acumen can be within any entrepreneur's reach.

The bestselling author of "Small Giants" returns with an original guide to exiting your company successfully and gracefully Bo Burlingham's book "Small Giants" became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem--how to handle the pressure to grow. It used deeply researched entrepreneurship stories to provide fresh insight into what really makes a great small business. Now Burlingham returns with a look at an even more common problem--how to leave your company gracefully. He interviewed dozens of owners who have sold or bequeathed their companies and distilled nine key lessons for success. For example, Ray Pagano turned down an initial offer for his twenty-eight-year-old company that manufactured housings for security cameras in favor of making the business more efficient and profitable. The effort paid off when he sold his newly improved company at the bottom of a recession for four times the original offer. Through stories like Pagano's, Burlingham offers an inspirational and enlightening guide through one of the most stressful processes every business owner must face.