Bill Taylor is a provocative and inspiring voice on the future of business - an agenda-setting writer, speaker, and entrepreneur who has shaped the global conversation about the best ways to compete, innovate, and succeed. The arrival of his latest book, Mavericks at Work, changed how companies and their leaders navigate a fast-moving world and devise strategies that win in the marketplace. Mavericks is an inspiring and effective collection of next practices that amounts to a business plan for the 21st Century.
Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win is the result of in-depth access to 32 of the world's most creative and disruptive competitors - organizations that are thriving in the marketplace by rethinking the logic of how business gets done. Just weeks after its release, it became a New York Times Best Seller, a Wall Street Journal Business Best Seller and a BusinessWeek Best Seller, and has attracted worldwide attention and acclaim. Mavericks has been the subject of high-profile articles, reviews, and columns in many top publications, including U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, and The Economist, which called the book "a pivotal work in the tradition of In Search of Excellence and Good to Great." The Economist also named Mavericks one of its "Books of the Year, 2006." Other accolades include: "Top Ten Business Book of The Year" (amazon.com), "Top Ten Book on Innovation and Design" (BusinessWeek), and "2006 Picks of the Year in Business Books" (The Financial Times).
The book has also been generating big attention on the small screen. ABC's Good Morning America devoted two segments (called "Maverick Monday") to the book, and NBC's Weekend Today devoted a lengthy segment to the book's vision of the new workplace. CNBC aired a five-part series, hosted by Maria Bartiromo, called The Business of Innovation, which spotlighted a number of companies and executives drawn from the pages of Mavericks at Work, and for which Taylor was an on-air commentator. CEO Exchange, the PBS series hosted by well-known television commentator Jeff Greenfield, devoted an entire one-hour segment to the ideas behind Mavericks at Work, including a series of commentaries by Taylor and a fascinating panel discussion with three truly maverick innovators.
In addition to its presence in North America, where Mavericks is already in its seventh printing, the book will be published in Europe, Australia, Japan, the rest of Asia (a Chinese-language edition), and Brazil (a Portuguese-language edition). The word-of-mouth buzz keeps building. "I didn't just 'read' this book, I devoured it!" declared management guru Tom Peters. James J. Cramer, co-founder of TheStreet.com and host of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, had this to say: "If Mavericks at Work had come out before I started TheStreet.com, I could have saved my investors (and myself) $100 million - because I would have been able to take the lessons in the book and apply them every day to my business."
Mavericks at Work may be Taylor's newest project, but it's just the latest chapter in a career devoted to challenging conventional wisdom and showcasing the power of business at its best. As a cofounder and founding editor of Fast Company, he launched a magazine that won countless awards, earned a passionate following among executives and entrepreneurs around the world - and became a legendary business success. In less than six years, an enterprise that took shape in some borrowed office space in Harvard Square sold for $340 million.
Fast Company, which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, has won just about every award there is to win in the magazine world, from "Startup of the Year" to "Magazine of the Year" to two coveted National Magazine Awards. In 2004, in recognition of Fast Company's impact on business, Taylor was named "Champion of Workplace Learning and Performance" by the American Society of Training and Development. Past winners of the award include Jack Welch of GE and Fred Smith of FedEx.
Taylor is an adjunct professor at Babson College, America's top-rated school for entrepreneurship, where he created the "Maverick Seminar at Babson College" - a unique academic program in which MBA students interact with the ideas and innovators creating the future of business. He is the co-author of three other books on strategy, leadership, and innovation: The Big Boys: Power and Position in American Business; No-Excuses Management and Going Global.
Bill Taylor has published numerous essays and CEO interviews in The Harvard Business Review, and his monthly column, "Under New Management," ran in the Sunday Business section of The New York Times. His new column, "Bill Taylor on Big Ideas," runs in The Guardian newspaper of London. A graduate of Princeton University and the MIT Sloan School of Management, he lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife and two daughters.
Bill Taylor will be speaking at ADVANCE on Mavericks at Work: How do you attract more than your fair share of the best people in your field? How do you win the battle for talent? In industry after industry, the old guard is cutting back and losing ground. Bill Taylor’s core message: Business as usual is bust. How to create a winning competitive strategy when the world keeps getting more and more competitive; how to make enduring connections with customers when they have more choices and higher expectations than ever; and a how to unleash innovation. In an age of hyper-competition and nonstop innovation, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something truly original. Bill Taylor will help you to rethink your strategy, reinvent your approach to innovation, reconnect with your customers, and rediscover the power of your people.