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Fast Company's Greatest Hits: Ten Years of the Most Innovative Ideas in Business

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This is an anthology of 32 articles which commemorate, indeed celebrate Fast Company's "ten years of the most innovative ideas in business," selected and co-edited by Mark N. Vamos and David Lidsky, the magazine's editor and senior editor, respectively. Obviously, each reader must decide which subjects are of greatest interest to her or him. As a long-time subscriber, I read most of them when they first appeared and was especially grateful to renew acquaintances with these:

Mort Myerson explains that almost everything he once believed about leadership proved wrong and why (by 1996) he had become convinced that values and IPOs are not mutually exclusive. Based on recent media accounts, many CEOs still haven't realized that.

Daniel Pink shares his thoughts (in 1998) about what he characterizes as an emerging "free agent nation." My guess (only a guess) is that even he did not realize when he wrote this article how many significant changes had yet to occur in the American workplace.

In an article written in 2000, Ron Lieber examines the problems which temporary workers ("free agents") encountered when employed by Microsoft.

In "Grassroots leadership: U.S. Military Academy" (2001), Keith Hammonds explains how a combination of monotomy and creativity in the training of cadets produces young men and women who are well prepared to lead others.

In 2003, Jennifer Reingold wrote an article in which she catches up with Tom Peters who (at that time) was struggling to regain his influence as a business thinker.

And then in 2005, Danielle Sacks offers a profile of Malcolm Gladwell, "The Accidental Guru," whose observations about "tipping points" and "blink" decision-making continue to generate mixed reactions.

Check out the brief comments about the 32 articles in the Contents section and then reconnect with some old favorites as well as with other material you may have missed. I acknowledge the difficulty Vamos and Lidsky must have experienced when making their selections and commend them on a consistently readable and thought-provoking collection of articles. Predictably, some now seem more dated than others. But that is a highly subjective judgment of mine which probably reveals more about me than about those articles which seem less significant to me today than they did when I first read them.

The book arrived promised date, and the condition is so nice as a brand new.
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This book hits on all the big business ideas of the last decade, ideas that Fast Company helped discover and explain. Great explanations that put each story in context today.