Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I read some stellar reviews on this book and expected it to be a milestone business guide. I was even enthusiastic through the first couple of chapters. However, if you have any business training and have been within 10 miles of a start-up or growth-stage company in your life, this book is pretty elementary. A value proposition, decent leadership, a Board that can open any door in the universe, a couple of mammoth customers - how can a company fail? Those accomplishments alone will get almost any company to a decent liquidity event unless it was all dumb luck. The most frustrating thing about the book is that it's all about "what." This is what makes it seem, as one reviewer put it, as if it were a PowerPoint presentation. It lists out the "whats" that, in retrospect, some very successful companies did. But it leaves out the "hows." Any company would give a lot to have their industry's equivalent of Tom Siebel on the Board. But Tom's number is not exactly in the phone book. So the question is, *how* does a company get those people on the Board? How does a company identify and even get in the door of those marquee companies? While the book gives a few snippets and a case comparison at the end, it really left my practical appetite unsatisfied. Maybe the whole book was a consulting proposal - if you want the "hows" you pay the piper.
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Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve Exponential GrowthPraise for BLUEPRINT TO A BILLION
"A wonderful, well thought out analysis of entrepreneurship and leadership of a growth company."—Howard Lester, Chairman, Williams-Sonoma, Inc.
"If you dream about growing your business to a billion, this is a fascinating down-to-earth study that you must read. Apply the seven essential principles to your business and you are off and running. Learn about strategy, growth, leadership, team building, and a whole lot more."—Joe Scarlett, Chairman of the Board, Tractor Supply Company
"Blueprint to a Billion is a well-researched and thoughtfully written book that quantifies the growth pattern of America's highest growth companies."—Professor John Quelch, Senior Associate Dean, Harvard Business School
"Eighty percent of the top-performing stocks in the last twenty years were small entrepreneurial companies that had an IPO in the prior eight years. Blueprint to a Billion tells you the seven key things these innovators did in common to become America's greatest growth companies."—William J. O'Neil, Chairman and Founder Investor's Business Daily, www.investors.com
"Thomson has written a masterful work that will catalyze, empower, inspire, motivate, and illuminate entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers. The world needs this book and will profit from it in manifold ways."—David M. Darst, Managing Director, Individual Investor Group Chief Investment Strategist, Morgan Stanley
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