What do you think?
Rate this book
The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business for People, Community, and Place
Abrams is cofounder and CEO of South Mountain Company, an employee- owned design and building company on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. In this volume, he offers the 30-person company as a model for how a company can become as much of a community as a business.
- GenresBusiness
313 pages, Hardcover
First published May 30, 2005
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 2, 2013
John Abrams is the founder of South Mountain Company, a design & build worker-owned cooperative in Martha’s Vineyard. His books describes the history of the company, their choice to move to a worker-owned cooperative model, and their overall philosophy of work.
Those principles are:
- Sharing ownership
- Cultivating workplace democracy
- Challenging the gospel of growth
- Balancing multiple bottom lines
- Celebrating the spirit of craft
- Practicing community entrepreneurism
- Thinking like cathedral builders
- Committing to the business of place
All of these principles resonate strongly with me, and I have a lot of thinking to do about how they might be relevant in my less tangible design practice. Some of the principles (craft, challenging growth) are similar to the philosophy of the folks at 37 Signals. The workplace democracy angle can be found, at least to a limited extent, at Valve. Thinking like cathedral builders is, of course, a cornerstone of the open source movement. But I can’t think of a technology organization that embodies all of the principles in any meaningful way. I’d like to see one.
Those principles are:
- Sharing ownership
- Cultivating workplace democracy
- Challenging the gospel of growth
- Balancing multiple bottom lines
- Celebrating the spirit of craft
- Practicing community entrepreneurism
- Thinking like cathedral builders
- Committing to the business of place
All of these principles resonate strongly with me, and I have a lot of thinking to do about how they might be relevant in my less tangible design practice. Some of the principles (craft, challenging growth) are similar to the philosophy of the folks at 37 Signals. The workplace democracy angle can be found, at least to a limited extent, at Valve. Thinking like cathedral builders is, of course, a cornerstone of the open source movement. But I can’t think of a technology organization that embodies all of the principles in any meaningful way. I’d like to see one.
July 13, 2008
If you're trying to build anything real and honest and hopeful -- really, anything -- this is a wonderful, straightforward compilation of one cooperative's paradigm of a life doing so, and everything they found useful along the way. The guide book on how to literally construct a beautiful world.
One of John Abrams' many gems:
"The only power is the power of conviction and expertise: to create change we have only to convince each other."
A great Balinese saying quoted within:
"We don't have any art. We do everything as well as we can."
One of John Abrams' many gems:
"The only power is the power of conviction and expertise: to create change we have only to convince each other."
A great Balinese saying quoted within:
"We don't have any art. We do everything as well as we can."
Read
May 23, 2008The May 2008 selection for the Sustainable Book club.
Want to read
January 12, 2009Sounds very utopian and idealistic: am hoping it's also realistic enough that I can hope to be a part of such a thing again (was once, long ago).
November 15, 2010
A good primer on 'conscious capitalism' in action
March 12, 2013
I think everyone interested in sustaining a community should read this book.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews