Reading List: Small Giants, Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham
Burlingham, an editor at large for Inc. Magazine, was the featured speaker at last month’s annual Growth Conference for the Boston chapter of the Association of Corporate Growth. He has written an enjoyable book about fourteen companies that took a different corporate direction and were willing to forgo revenue or geographic growth in order to achieve other “remarkable ends.”
His profiles range from Anchor Brewing, the original American micro-brewery, to Righteous Babe Records, the Buffalo, N.Y.-based record company for Ani DiFranco. Burlingame’s analysis identified important factors such as a company’s “mojo”, or driving force, and how companies maintain and generate mojo. Other common themes for the fourteen small giants included:
- A conscious awareness that they had a choice as to the type of company they could develop
- Resistance to pressures to build what the outside world thought they should build
- Great relationships with their communities
- Excellent relationships with customers and suppliers
- Unusually intimate workplaces
- Flexible management structures
- Passion
Around these themes, Burlingame crafted absorbing stories about sleepless nights, conflict, strength of character, and success. As Burlingame writes, “In exchange for growth, they get back in return two things: time and control. The combination equals freedom”. A good read for an alternative look at companies who do not choose explosive growth at any cost. To read more, visit the book’s web site.
