The New Pioneers: The Men and Women Who Are Transforming the Workplace and Marketplace

The New Pioneers is about a powerful revolution that is reshaping the face of American business and creating an opportunity-rich economy. It is not to be found in the headline-grabbing megamergers, takeovers, downsizing, fiscal crises, or bustups that command the front pages of the financial press. The vanguards of change are most visible not in the penthouse suites of the Fortune 500 but in spectacularly successful small- and medium-size firms.

With the compelling storytelling and keen insight that rank him among America's best-read business columnists, Tom Petzinger takes you inside this revolution to reveal how a dynamic generation of innovators and entrepreneurs is creating a collaborative new work-place, a value-added marketplace, and an economy over-flowing with opportunity. These new pioneers recognize that the command-and-control hierarchy of the twentieth century is no longer responsive to the economic forces sweeping the globe.

With the big-picture perspectives that have made his weekly Wall Street Journal column, "The Front Lines," famous, Petzinger draws from corporate case studies of companies in more than forty cities in thirty states, as well as accounts from overseas. His startling conclusions reveal not only a changing of the guard but far-reaching changes in the way business is being conducted.

Among the highlights:

x How technology is wiping out economies of scale while creating economies of scope and locality

x How today's entrepreneurs are redefining the meaning of "niche"

x The creation of radical new compensation and motivation strategies for a new kind of workforce

x What business is learning from complexity science in the search for fundamental laws governing natural and human systems

x How the family firm can serve as a model for all business

x Why the new ethos sweeping business signals a return to fundamental human values

Petzinger's brilliant blending of microscopic reporting and "macroscopic" insight promises to make this book a modern classic.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [275]-283) and index.

Tom Petzinger has spent twenty years at The Wall Street Journal as a beat reporter, investigative reporter, bureau chief, Washington economics editor, and, for the past four years, a weekly columnist writing "The Front Lines." He is a winner of the Gerald Loeb prize, the highest award in business and financial journalism. He is the author of Hard Landing, an account of the airline dogfights since deregulation, which was called "rich, readable, and authoritative" by Fortune, "vivid and detailed" by The Washington Monthly, "lively and absorbing" by The Boston Globe, and "masterfully detailed" by Business Week. His earlier book, Oil and Honor: The Texaco-Pennzoil Wars, was called "a riveting drama" by The New York Times, "masterful" by Business Week, and "nuanced financial journalism at its best" by Kirkus.

Petzinger is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he was a Richter International Scholar. He is married, has three children, and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He invites readers to e-mail their comments and criticisms to tom@petzinger.com

Contents

Introduction: The Age of Adaptation

1. Being in Business
Trade and technology are fundamentally human.

2. Everyone a Middleman
Why the new rules favor the small and connected.

3. "Have It Your Way"
The customer is the common denominator.

4. What Am I Bid?
A revolutionary economy demands radical pricing.

5. From Planning to Playing
How agility and identity nurture innovation and trust.

6. Nobody's as Smart as Everybody
Knowledge and self-organization flourish at the edge of chaos.

7. All Together Now
How common purpose comes to life.

8. Money and Motivation
Where people yearn to perform.

9. At Home in the Economy
The reunion of family and work.

10. "All My Sons"
Will business save society?

Notes
Annotated Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index