Tom teamed up with publisher Dorling Kindersley to present a departure in business books. Visually exciting and compelling to read, Re-imagine! presents reasons why COOL BUSINESS is NOT OPTIONAL.

Books - Tom Peters

Motorola and Sony struggled to adapt to the Apple era, while Pitney Bowes (postage) and Kodak (film) were built on and failed to pivot from declining technologies. The emergence of global manufacturing also seemed to catch former greats such as Dana and Raychem on the wrong side. Published in 1994, The Pursuit of WOW! was served up as "a practical guide to impractical times." It's built on 210 numbered observations, all with a common bond of stepping out and standing out from the growing crowd of look-alikes. Along with the best of his columns, Peters includes questions and rebuttals that come from readers and listeners, as well as his own candid responses. Tom writes that The Pursuit of WOW! is "a clarion call for more personal and organizational spiciness in a world that will tolerate nothing less." This is what we call the WOW Project. It's obvious ... in retrospect. The common denominator-bottom line for both the professional service firm/PSF and the individual/Brand You ... is the project. And for the cool individual in the cool professional service firm there is only one answer: the cool project. The Brand You50: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an 'Employee' into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! The aim, in short: Cool People working on Cool Projects with Cool Clients. The aim redux: A COOL Finance—Purchasing, IS, HR—Department. Why not?

The cool professional service firm is just that: cool talent, a portfolio of cool projects, cool clients. Period. Its only asset—literally—is brains. Its only product is projects. Its only aim is truly memorable client service.

What happened to the world’s “greatest” companies?

It’s this final point that I find most interesting. In the zeitgeist of the day, they were truly incredible organizations with enviable performance, widely admired leaders, and strong cultures. So looking at what happened to them makes for a great natural experiment where the company’s quality is a given – the variable is the context in which it operated. Greatness is no guarantee of survival. It seems the 18 organizations featured in Built to Last really were built to last, as all the companies in the BTL portfolio are still around. The other two portfolios have quite a few dropouts, however. During the 20-year evaluation period, about 1 in 7 disappeared as independent entities. Two well-performing companies were acquired ( Amoco and Gillette bought by BP and P&G respectively). Four low performers were also swallowed up ( Amdahl, Data General, DEC and Raychem), and three filed for bankruptcy ( Kmart, Wang and Circuit City). Another five fell off the list after the period we evaluated, including Kodak’s famous bankruptcy in 2013. So, did being great matter to these companies’ ultimate fate? In my view, it was good to be great, but the external environments in which these companies found themselves mattered far more. If you look at the stars versus the failures, the biggest dividing line seems to be their position in relation to a megatrend—either a good one or a bad one. Yes, it takes skill to ride a megatrend— Wal-Mart had to manage its meteoric rise from #259 on the Forbes 500 to #1—but all these companies were skilled, and on the whole that didn’t seem to matter as much. Funny thing ... the work itself always seems missing in most discussions of "management." (Maybe it's because we've expended so little energy studying white collar work.)

Women are where it's at! And Boomers and Geezers are where damn near ALL the loot is! How you respond to emerging trends and exploit their potential is key to the success of your organization. Create a strategic vision for the future with revolutionary new ideas from Tom Peters and Martha Barletta. Discover how marketing to women is "the biggest trend in the world." Find out how you can target the aging population. Think about making that strategic realignment. Great companies were more likely to do really badly than really well. Their odds of outperforming the market were 52-48, hardly better than a coin toss. But there are more big losers than big winners on the lists. Just eight companies outperformed the index by more than 5%, while twice that number underperformed by the same percentage. Given the difficulty of beating the market, it’s no surprise that the biggest group is in the middle band of +/-2%.