Taylor, William C. 1959–

(Bill Taylor)

PERSONAL:

Born January 26, 1959, in Waterbury, CT; son of Charles Hughes (in business) and Lucille Taylor; married Chloe Mantel, April 1, 1986; children: two daughters. Education: Princeton University, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1982; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.S., 1987.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Wellesley, MA. E-mail—bill@mavericksatwork.com

CAREER:

Writer, public speaker, and entrepreneur. Multinational Monitor, Washington, DC, cofounder, associate editor, and contributor, 1979-80; Hartford Advocate, Hartford, CT, reporter, 1982-83; Center for Study of Responsive Law, Washington, DC, writer and researcher, 1983-85; Sloan Management Review, Cambridge, MA, editor, 1986-87; Fast Company magazine, cofounder and founding editor; Babson College, Babson Park, MA, adjunct professor.

MEMBER:

Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

First prize in weekly business and economics reporting, New England Press Association, for "Gold Out of Brass"; Connecticut State Scholarship, 1977-81, and Sigmund Wahrsager Scholarship in political economy, 1981, both from Princeton University.

WRITINGS:

(With Ralph Nader) The Big Boys: Power and Position in American Business, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1986.

(With T.J. Rodgers and Rick Foreman) No-Excuses Management: Proven Systems for Starting Fast, Growing Quickly, and Surviving Hard Times, Currency/Doubleday (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Alan M. Webber) Going Global: Four Entrepreneurs Map the New World Marketplace, Viking (New York, NY), 1996.

(With Polly LaBarre) Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2006.

Also author of Managing across Cultures: Human Resources Issues in Japanese Companies in the U.S., 1989. Contributor to books, including Public Domain, Private Dominion: A History of Public Mineral Policy in America, by Carl. J. Mayer and George A. Riley, Sierra Books (San Francisco, CA), 1985. Contributor to periodicals, including Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Harvard Review, and the Hartford Advocate. Contributed monthly column, "Under New Management," to the SundayBusiness section of the New York Times.

ADAPTATIONS:

Mavericks at Work has been adapted as an audiobook.

SIDELIGHTS:

An expert on the future of the business world, William C. Taylor is the coauthor of several books on business and the cofounder of the business magazine Fast Company. In the book No-Excuses Management: Proven Systems for Starting Fast, Growing Quickly, and Surviving Hard Times, written with T.J. Rodgers and Rick Foreman, Taylor and his coauthors tell how Rodgers turned computer chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor from a Silicon Valley startup in 1983 into a 300 million dollar business. "The book exudes Rodgers's combative style at every turn," wrote Paul H. Weaver in Reason. No-Excuses Management, Weaver continued, "offers a candid and engaging picture of the way an unusually thoughtful executive does his job in a challenging industry," and added: "Its outstanding quality is a passionate, almost novelistic sense of reality."

Going Global: Four Entrepreneurs Map the New World Marketplace, written by Taylor and Alan M. Webber, features four business officers—from Whirlpool, McKinsey & Co.'s Tokyo office, Nestle, and Kleiner Perkins—and tells how they helped lead their companies into the global marketplace. "Their stories abound with adventure and conquest," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Mary Whaley, writing in Booklist, commented that the authors "compare the opening up of the new economy … with the discovery of the New World."

Taylor collaborated with Polly LaBarre to write Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win. In their book, the authors explain that business leaders should continually look for new challenges and think progressively about their companies. In the process, they discuss a promising new business environment and how many "older" companies, such as IBM and Procter & Gamble, are developing new business models to make their names stand out. In addition, Mavericks at Work describes how modern entrepreneurs and businesses, such as Google, Cranium, Whole Foods Market, and ING Direct, have created prosperous companies by being innovative and unconventional. The authors include numerous case studies of business leaders who have ignored tradition and turned to creativity to make their companies successful.

"Mavericks offers compelling evidence that differentiation—‘strategy as originality,’ in the words of Taylor and LaBarre—is crucial to the distinctive customer experiences and breakthrough practices that lead to growth," wrote Jena McGregor in Business Week. McGregor went on to call the book "wide-ranging," adding that "Taylor and LaBarre muse on everything from open-source innovation to the value of open-book management." David Siegfried, writing in Booklist, noted that, according to the authors, "these new innovators … hold the key to reinstituting business as a source of inspiration and progress." An Economist contributor referred to Mavericks at Work as "a pivotal work in the tradition of In Search of Excellence." Armchair Interviews Web site contributor Celia Renteria Szelwach wrote: "This book is for corporate executives, entrepreneurs, or anyone desiring to break the mold by applying unconventional ideas and unusual strategies."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1996, Mary Whaley, review of Going Global: Four Entrepreneurs Map the New World Marketplace, p. 1656; September 15, 2006, David Siegfried, review of Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, p. 12.

Boston Globe, September 24, 2006, Robert Weisman, review of Mavericks at Work.

Business Week, October 2, 2006, Jena McGregor, review of Mavericks at Work, p. 104.

Economist, November 18, 2006, review of Mavericks at Work, p. 86.

Newsweek, October 2, 2006, John Sparks, review of Mavericks at Work.

Publishers Weekly, May 20, 1996, review of Going Global, p. 247.

Reason, December, 1993, Paul H. Weaver, review of No Excuses Management: Proven Systems for Starting Fast, Growing Quickly, and Surviving Hard Times, p. 51.

ONLINE

Armchair Interviews,http://www.armchairinterviews.com/ (March 16, 2007), Celia Renteria Szelwach, review of Mavericks at Work.

Mavericks at Work Web site,http://www.mavericksatwork.com/ (March 16, 2007), brief profile of author.

MiamiHerald.com,http://www.miami.com/ (March 16, 2007), Richard Pachter, review of Mavericks at Work.

U.S. News & World Report Web site,http://www.usnews.com/ (September 17, 2006), Rick Newman, review of Mavericks at Work.

World Business,http://www.worldbusinesslive.com/ (January 22, 2007), Morice Mendoza, "The Maverick Mindset," interview with author.