About the Book
With a foreword by Reid Hoffman"This is a handbook for disruptors." - Eric SchmidtNew York Times bestselling author Andrew McAfee's The Geek Way tackles a fundamental question: why do some organizations perform so well in uncertain, fast-changing environments? In this groundbreaking book, McAfee "makes a fascinating case" (Adam Grant) for a revolution hiding in plain sight, explains the science behind its success, and shows how the geek way can be used by anyone to stay well ahead of the competition. McAfee, the coauthor of The Second Machine Age, has had a ringside seat for the biggest business battles of the 21st century. They haven't been fair fights. In industry after industry incumbents have been knocked down and a new crop of leaders -- the business geeks -- have appeared. What's their secret? McAfee's answer is that they've created a new culture: more freewheeling, fast-moving, autonomous, argumentative, evidence-based, and egalitarian than those that dominated the industrial era. This culture is based on four great geek norms: science, ownership, speed, and openness. Counterintuitive and paradigm-shifting, The Geek Way does more than just describe these norms and show them in action. It also reveals why they work so well. McAfee explains how they tap into humanity's superpower, which is our ability to cooperate intensely and learn rapidly. By providing insights from the young discipline of cultural evolution, McAfee shows that when we come together under the right conditions -- when we follow the geek way -- culture evolves quickly and an organization excels at innovation, agility, and execution simultaneously. Under the wrong conditions, meanwhile, things grind to a halt and we get bureaucracy, chronic delays, cultures of silence, and other classic dysfunctions of the industrial era.The Geek Way is a book like no other. It will change and ground your thinking around building healthy, high-performing organizations, empower yourself with the proper thinking and tools that will fuel innovation and allow you to seize opportunities.
About the Author :
Andrew McAfee is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-founder and co-director of MIT's Initiative on the Digital Economy. He studies how technological progress changes the world. He is the author of More from Less and the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling The Second Machine Age.
Reid Hoffman is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and author who is best known as the cofounder of LinkedIn.
Review :
Andy understands that we haven't just been creating new technologies in Silicon Valley -- we've also been creating new ways to run a company in a world permeated by tech. Here he distills what we've come up with. This book is a handbook for disruptors.-- "Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google"
By combining management theory, competitive strategy, the science of evolution, psychology, military history, and cultural anthropology, McAfee has produced a remarkable work of synthesis that finally explains, with a single unified theory (which he dubs "the geek way") the reasons why the tech startup approach has taken over so much of the world.-- "Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and New York Times bestselling author of The Start Up of You"
I can see dead companies. They're the large incumbents who still run themselves as if software isn't eating the world. If you'd rather lead the transformation than be consumed by it, start putting this book's insights into practice as quickly as you can.-- "Steve Jurvetson, geek"
I've worked closely with Andy for more than a decade, I'm still blown away by this book. It's bold and original, relevant and rigorous, and immediately useful for any restless, curious innovator. In other words, for any geek.-- "Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and co-author of the New York Times bestselling The Second Machine Age"
"The Geek Way makes a fascinating case that the most important technological revolution of our time isn't what companies make, but how they're managed. Andy McAfee is a world-class intellectual provocateur--he never ceases to challenge my assumptions and sharpen my thinking--and reading this book will do the same for you. It's the most compelling analysis I've seen of what Silicon Valley has learned about building more effective organizations, and what they still have to learn."
--Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of THINK AGAIN and HIDDEN POTENTIAL, and host of the TED podcast Re: Thinking
[A] smart, irreverent, informative guide to navigating the future of work. Companies that don't follow The Geek Way, according to author Andy McAfee, will fall behind...Each of these simple words contains more than you can know, until you read this remarkable book.-- "Amy C. Edmondson, Professor of Leadership & Management, Harvard Business School, and author of Right Kind of Wrong"
In industry after industry, corporate boards are asking management what their plan is to thrive in an unsettled, fast-changing environment. The Geek Way contains among the best answers I've seen to this critical question.-- "Dambisa Moyo, Global Economist; Member, House of Lords"
