THE BIG ENOUGH COMPANY

In Good Company founders Lancaster and Abrams interview 100 businesswomen in this snappy guide to entrepreneurial bliss.

This well-crafted book certainly isn’t just for women, but rather for anyone dreaming of making their career work for them. Eschewing the traditional (and admittedly male) grow-it-and-sell-it model of entrepreneurship, the authors focus on helping struggling entrepreneurs create the kinds of companies they dream about. Sadly, write the authors, despite huge reserves of energy, drive and intelligence, many of those modern entrepreneurs end up getting in their own way. They take bad advice, expand when they shouldn’t and sell things they don’t care about. Lancaster and Abrams provide a recipe for success that begins with a series of simple yet penetrating questions that crystallize why someone would want to venture out on their own in the first place—and, subsequently, where they could go wrong. They advocate savvy business solutions that that would likely be anathema in the male-dominated corporate arena—e.g., sharing, cooperation, even friendship. Smashing the corporate paradigm is possible, and it never looked so rewarding and fun. Knuckle-draggers in pinstripes will probably continue to look for the easy kill, but readers with a soul will want to sit down, uncork the highlighter and dig in.