The geek way Andrew McAfee The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results
The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results
The Economist's Best Books of 2023
Forbes Top 10 Business Books of 2023
First published 2023 by Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette Book Group
First published in the UK 2023 by Macmillan Business an imprint of Pan Macmillan
Associated companies throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-0350-2617-3 HB
ISBN 978-1-0350-2618-0 TPB
Copyright Andrew McAfee 2023
The right of Andrew McAfee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.
Financial Times' Monthly Best Business Books to Read Pick
The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results
MACMILLAN BUSINESS
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
ANDREW MCAFEE
FOREWORD BY REID HOFFMAN
About the Author
Andrew McAfee is the New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Second Machine Age. He is the co-director of the IDE and a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research investigates how information technology changes the way companies perform, organize themselves and compete. In addition to having numerous papers published, McAfee also writes a widely read blog, which is at times one of the 10,000 most popular in the world. He is also the author of More from Less.
In this "handbook for disruptors" (Eric Schmidt), The Geek Way reveals a new way to get big things done. It will change the way you think about work, teams, projects, and culture, and give you the insight and tools you need to harness our human superpowers of learning and cooperation.
What is "being geeky?" It's being a perennially curious person, one who's not afraid to tackle hard problems and embrace unconventional solutions. McAfee shows how the geeks have created a new culture based around four norms: science, ownership, speed, and openness. The geek way seems odd at first. It's not deferential to experts, fond of planning and process, afraid of mistakes, or obsessed with "winning." But it explains everything from why Montessori babies turn out to be creative tinkerers to how newcomers are disrupting industry after industry (and still just getting started).
When all four norms are in place, a culture emerges that is freewheeling, fast-moving, egalitarian, evidence-driven, argumentative, and autonomous. Why does the geek way work so much better? McAfee provides an original answer: because it taps into humanity's superpower, which is our ability to cooperate intensely and learn rapidly. By providing insights from the young discipline of cultural evolution, McAfee shows that when we come together under the right conditions, we quickly figure out how to build reusable spaceships and self-correcting organizations. Under the wrong conditions, though, we create bureaucracy, chronic delays, cultures of silence, and the other classic dysfunctions of the Industrial Era.
Mixing cutting-edge science, history, analysis, and stories that show the geek way in action, McAfee offers a new way to see the world and empowering tools for seizing the big opportunities of today and tomorrow.
New York Times bestselling author Andrew McAfee offers a new way to get big things done. It will change the way you think about work, teams, projects and culture and give you the insight and tools you need to harness our superpowers of learning and cooperation.
The geek way seems odd at first. It's not deferential to experts, fond of planning and process, afraid of mistakes or obsessed with 'winning'. Yet it explains everything from why Montessori babies turn out to be creative tinkerers to how newcomers are disrupting industry after industry (and still just getting started). 'Being geeky' is nothing more than being a perennially curious person one who's not afraid to tackle hard problems and embrace unconventional solutions.
McAfee shows how the geeks have created a new culture based around four norms: science; ownership; speed; and openness.
When all four norms are in place, a culture emerges that is freewheeling, fast-moving, egalitarian, evidence-driven, argumentative and autonomous. The geek way taps into humanity's superpower, which is our ability to cooperate intensely and learn rapidly. By providing insights from the young discipline of cultural evolution, McAfee shows that, when we come together under the right conditions, we quickly figure out how to build reusable spaceships and self-correcting organizations. Under the wrong conditions, we create bureaucracy, chronic delays, cultures of silence and other classic dysfunctions of the Industrial Era.
Mixing cutting-edge science, history, analysis and stories that show this philosophy in action, The Geek Way provides readers with a fresh outlook on business and empowering tools for seizing the big opportunities of today and tomorrow
ANDREW MCAFEE is the co-founder and
co-director of the Initiative on the Digital Economy and a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He studies how digital technologies are changing the world. He has written for publications including Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. McAfee was educated at MIT and Harvard and is the author of three other books: The Second Machine Age; Machine, Platform, Crowd; and More from Less. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.