Customer Reviews

Super-Flexibility for Knowledge Enterprises: A Toolkit for Dynamic Adaptation

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This is a crisply written, elegant book that analyses and describes the practices of silicon valley in a way that is at once readable, informative, and inspirational. In less than 200 pages, the authors describe (with entertaining and instructive examples interspersed) the silicon valley ecosystem. This ecosystem has been resiliant through the ups and downs of the past 20 years, and has been the engine behind the productivity of the US economy.

It is said that if you really know your stuff, you can describe it simply and clearly. Bahrami and Evans know their stuff. They have lived and breathed with the creators of silicon valley for 20+ years, and the book is peppered with insights and personal anecdotes, and quotes from personal conversations with some of the legends of silicon valley.

This is a book that would be equally applicable to the academic, the educator, and the entrepreneur. This is a must read for communities outside silicon valley that have wrestled over how to create entrepreneurial energy in their midst (European and Asian governments come to mind). The formula for success is spelled out (though how to get there is less clear).

I found the book to be particularly good at surfacing broadly applicable principles. The phrase they coin, super-flexibility, is expressive and right-on. The impressive bibliography shows they have done their homework.

This book is a good read: well-written, fast paced, analytical and anecdotally rich. It fills a real need. Though I have lived in silicon valley for almost 3 decades, I learned a lot by reading it, and would recommend it broadly.

This is a mind-blowing book, bulit on the authors 20-years experience. I would recommend this book to those with a research orientation. Read it, and u will find it really offers an integrated view of flexibility better than any one else. The only drawback lies with weak applications of managerial mechanisms.