The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results

by Andrew McAfee

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt explained to me one of the biggest consequences of this shift: “In the classic corporate model, everything is run in a hierarchical way, the offices get bigger over time, and bureaucracies abound. Companies like this were actually successful for a long time because they have some strengths: they’re predictable and they serve their customers well, as long as customers keep needing the same thing. The reason that culture doesn’t work very well in the information age is that the customers need changes, and you have to be able to change more quickly than, you know, every five years.” The geek way is a set of solutions for thriving in this faster-moving world. They’re cultural solutions, not technological ones. As much as the business geeks love technology they don’t think that any particular suite of technologies holds the key to building a great modern company. There’s no killer app for business success. What there is instead is what there have always been: people, groups, and the challenge of getting them to work well together in pursuit of goals. After thinking long and hard about this challenge, the business geeks have figured out some powerful and unconventional ways to tackle it. They’ve taken the standard corporate culture of the industrial era and given it an upgrade.