In this invaluable book, Larry Farrell provides the first world-wide investigation of the business practices of great entrepreneurs and their high-growth companies. Drawing on ten years of research and hands-on experience, he not only shows why "the management elite," those wonderful folks from Harvard and McKinsey, are unprepared and often unfit to build great businesses, he also describes the qualities of mind and modes of action that do build them. He does this in the most direct ways, going around the globe to spotlight the entrepreneurs who have made it happen, brilliantly analyzing the invaluable lessons they have to teach us.These entrepreneurs may be American, English, German, Japanese, or Chinese. Their products may be autos, computers, cosmetics, hotels, or biogenetic vaccines. Debunking the myth that giant corporations are - or ever were - the engines of prosperity, he explains why big business is in big trouble, why so many big companies like those featured in In Search of Excellence are now in disarray - and why such former sacrosanct giants as General Motors and I.B.M. are in the throes of desperate reorganization. Farrell's bold and vital message is: the key to success in the twenty-first century will be old-fashioned entrepreneurism, not management science.Using detailed examinations of legendary enterprisers like Walt Disney, Soichiro Honda, and William Lever, plus fascinating interviews with pace-setting international entrepreneurs such as Britain's Lord Forte, Japan's Harukazu Miki, and America's Dr. Edward Penhoet, Farrell distills the four bedrock principles of high-growth enterprise: a powerful sense of mission; absolute focus on customers and products; an urgency for high-speed innovation; and self-motivated behavior at every level. His prescription for transforming bureaucracy back to enterprise is detailed and blunt: dismantle the twentieth-century corporation and start over with the entrepreneurial basics. Larry Farrell has written a landmark book - straightforward and inspiring - a no-nonsense blueprint for business survival and success that is destined to be a touchstone of business thinking for the rest of this century and the next. Read Less