This book is basically a profile of a bunch of companies that are maverick in many ways – the way they think, the way they speak, the way they compete, the way they treat customers, the way they recruit, the way they hire. Taylor and LaBarre demonstrate using them as examples that it’s not necessary to do the standard thing, imitate and undercut your competitors, or follow boring old business practices – these companies do well not just despite their “madness”, but thrive because of it.

A smattering of the advice: focus relentlessly on your customers and forget about the competition, transition R&D from a problem-solving approach to a solution-finding approach (i.e. look out there), share critical operating information with your employees, develop a culture complete with values, passion and jargon (but don’t institute it, grow it), etc., etc.

Some bits that felt relevant to me in my own working life, pertaining to small, nimble projects (which I prefer to big lumbering ones):

“We all overestimate what can be done in a year. But we underestimate what can get done in twelve weeks.” (194-5, Extreme Blue/IBM example)

“There’s another virtue to encouraging lots of little messes: it tends to prevent huge disasters. Why do so many companies pursue dead-end projects long after they should be dead and buried? Because they load those projects up with financial resources and top-management prestige; projects become too famous to fail. At SEI, ad-hoc teams bootstrap their ideas until actual results justify more resources. Not only does that allow the company to kill weak ideas without lots of mourning, but it encourages grassroots innovators to try more things without a huge fear of failure.” (241, SEI example, which is backed up by a flexible architecture in the SEI office – desks on wheels, which can be moved into a free corner whenever a new project team wants to start).

They end off with a list further reading that will assist you in becoming maverick yourself. These are some of the ones that look interesting:

• Karaoke Capitalism, Ridderstrale and Nordstrom
• Blue Ocean Strategy, Kim and Mauborgne
• The New Pioneers, Petzinger
• Leading the Revolution, Hamel
• Open Innovation, Chesbrough
• The Success of Open Source, Weber
• Harnessing the Hive, Herz [www.edventure.com]
• How to be a star at work, Kelley
• Weird ideas that work, Sutton