Amazon.com Review
In
The New Pioneers, Thomas Petzinger brings alive the people who are leading a revolution in American business. Petzinger contends that fundamental changes in the U.S. economy are being spurred by technology that obliterates old boundaries as well as new freedoms in the workplace and the efforts of entrepreneurs with a zeal for innovation and customer service. "We can't yet see it everywhere, but a great awakening is now under way in business," he writes.
A columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Petzinger spent three years traveling across America to interview management gurus and businesspeople at the forefront of this economic seachange. He discovered that large and small businesses alike are succeeding by abandoning the old command-and-control ethos. In today's best-run companies, he notes, employees are getting the leeway to manage themselves. Petzinger profiles people as diverse as Pete and Laura Wakeman of Dillon, Montana, who built the Great Harvest Bakery chain by making their company more of a community than a corporation; Nick Gleason, a Harvard Business School graduate who eschewed a big salary to launch an Internet design company in a Boston ghetto; and Richard Knowles, who turned around a struggling West Virginia chemical plant for the Dupont Corporation. Provocative and well written, The New Pioneers is for top managers, regular working people, and anyone who loves a good business yarn. --Dan Ring
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Wall Street Journal columnist Petzinger (Hard Landing) does an excellent job of spotlighting the faces behind the businesses that are leading the way into what he calls the "new economy." The new economy is entrepreneurial, not corporate; it stresses adaptation rather than bureaucratic planning, "teamwork" and "empowerment" rather than rigid command-and-control structures. While the stories of the people behind innovative companies are often intriguing, readers will be left wondering what to do with this information. Some readers will even find Petzinger's premise puzzling. For instance, his introductory example is an innovative Philadelphia pharmacy that managed to succeed in a poverty-stricken area of the city. Petzinger is full of justified admiration for the way the owner wedded his pharmacy to the community, offered employees profit sharing and made a mint. Ultimately, however, the owner was so successful that he sold his three stores to Rite-Aid. This inspiring and informative book would have been even better had Petzinger delved more deeply into the paradox that the successes and innovations of the new pioneers he celebrates coincide with an era of increasing corporate consolidation. Readers are left wanting more guidance from someone who clearly knows the territory.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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