Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big

by Bo Burlingham

I added some additional criteria as I went along. 1. I decided to restrict myself to companies started or owned by people who had actually been faced with a decision and made a choice. That is, they had had the opportunity to grow much faster, get much bigger, go public, or become part of a large corporation, and they’d made a conscious decision not to. 2. I decided to focus on companies that were admired and emulated in their own industries. I wanted companies that had the respect of those who might otherwise be their harshest critics, namely, their peers and their competitors. 3. I looked for companies that had been singled out for their extraordinary achievements by other independent observers. It’s always nice to have third-party corroboration that a company is, in fact, worthy of special recognition.