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

~ Mark Vamos (Editor), David Lidsky (Editor), Jim Collins (Foreword) "Something is happening and it affects us all..." (more)
Key Phrases: free agent nation, grassroots leadership, temp worker, New York, West Point, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the end of its first decade, Fast Company hit a down note and sold for peanuts after years of disappointing ad sales. This compilation of articles shows why the business magazine deserved better. In late 1995, it set out to get readers excited about the new, Internet-driven world of business, aiming to create "the language of the revolution." To some extent, it succeeded, becoming the flagship publication of the new economy with attention-grabbing layouts and a populist, socially conscious tone. This book's 32 articles, presented in chronological order, offer an engaging survey of the past 10 years ' management ideas, profiles, trends and rising stars"JetBlue, Craigslist, the iMac, outsourcing to India, the new employer-worker social contract. But the book lacks the magazine's design-fueled energy and, more seriously, some of the ideas are simply outdated. Nor do the brief introductions always provide necessary context. For instance, Daniel Pink's 1997 article on "Free Agent Nation" envisions a glorious future for freelancers, but Ron Lieber's 2000 investigation of "permatemps" at Microsoft warns of "free agency's dark side." There's a reason why few business books stay in print more than a couple of years: examples and lessons become obsolete all too quickly"especially during a revolution. (July 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

The greatest articles from the hottest business magazine of the past decade

Since 1995, Fast Company has been the place to turn for cutting-edge business ideas and profiles of amazing companies and their leaders. This hardcover collection gathers the magazine’s best and most enduring articles, the ones that generated the most buzz and the deepest insights.

These outstanding pieces include:
• "The Brand Called You" by Tom Peters
• "Free Agent Nation" by Daniel Pink
• "In Search of Courage" by John McCain
• "Malcolm Gladwell: The Accidental Guru" by Danielle Sachs
• "Are You on Craig’s List?" by Katharine Mieszkowski
• "Everything I Thought I Knew About Leadership is Wrong by Mort Meyerson

As Jim Collins writes in his foreword: "Imagine you could sit at Thomas Jefferson’s dinner table and listen in on the conversation during the late 1700s. That’s the way I like to think of the best articles in Fast Company collected in this wonderful book. Reading them is like listening in on a series of fascinating conversations with some of the best minds and creative thinkers of a generation."

This is the perfect book for Fast Company’s hundreds of thousands of devoted fans—and for others who missed these great articles the first time around.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (July 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591841186
• ISBN-13: 978-1591841180
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #308,252 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The pleasure of enjoying their (fast) company once again, August 28, 2006

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great overview of great magazine, July 8, 2006

By	Jolly Reader "Jolly Reader" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

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.