If you are looking for a good management book that will present a new paradigm or will change the way you think, this book IS NOT for you. If you love management books, and find historical information about great companies and anecdotes within these companies, this book will nicely add to your collection.

The book was written before 1998 and was aimed at giving a picture of how the best companies of the time were getting ready to face the 21st century. To give you an idea of how well the book succeeded in predicting the future - the word 'Internet' is mentioned on ONLY 9 pages in the entire 350 page book. Of course, the inability to accurately predict the future and especially a sudden change brought about by something like the Internet is forgivable. The authors combine the Internet with a general section on Information Technology and its impact on the future.

The book makes for an interesting read though. It is packed with quotations, little known but interesting facts about big businesses, deep insights into what the leaders at the time were thinking (at companies like Ford, GM etc.), and commonsense management advice. Evertime I picked up the book, I got the distinct feeling that the authors didn't have a real point to make, but at the same time, I couldn't put down the book as I was fascinated by everything they found in their research.

There are not only references but also discussion of famous books by other authors, like 'Reengineering the Corporation' by Michael Hammer & James Champy. The authors throw some cleverly disguised aspersions on the authors of these other books.

The book is split into four parts (taken directly from the introduction and a really good summary of the whole book) -

1. The first part describes the drivers of change - the obsolescence of the old corporation, the eruption of information technology, globalization, the new intensity of competition, society's expectations, and customers' expectations.

2. The second part describes how the new enterprise is reshaping the way business views people, including the customer, the leader, and the employee.

3. The third part analyzes how companies are using the new tools they have in information technology, innovation, speed, and quality.

4. The fourth part takes up the changes in the corporation itself, how companies are becoming global, how they network, how they learn, how they can best respond to society's demands, how they can redesign their architecture.

Bottom line, if you are interested in curious facts and little known information about famous companies, this book would serve quite well for that purpose. I am still enjoying my many sessions with this book learning about all these companies. This is one of those books that you won't feel like throwing away. It has that endearing quality to it. But don't expect to learn something revolutionary in this book that will change your future. It's just a fun management book to read.

This book: describes the drivers of change; examines how the new enterprise views people; analyzes how companies are using new tools in information technology, innovation, speed and quality; and explores how organizations are changing. Chapters end with highlights that prove very helpful to serious readers with limited time.

The discussion about organizational drivers of change is based on research findings, which makes this book not only interesting but credible in a blizzard of publications spewing forth about organizational change. Given all these books on this subject, many based on the thin ice of one person's experiences in a few enterprises, a research-based work is appreciated. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder: The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and Stern's Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.

The book is extremely well researched and thorough and is not blase enough to put forth a framework. Where it succeeds is by putting forth what the most successful companies are doing to prepare themselves for the next century in all aspects of their operations