“We live in an age of heretics: an age where unconventional ideas become conventional wisdom rapidly. And that’s a good thing. Because the future of industrial society depends upon our ability to transcend the destructive management of the past and build a better kind of future. That doesn’t mean embracing every unconventional idea. Nor does it mean flouting authority. A heretic is someone who sees a truth that contradicts the conventional wisdom.” Pp. 3-4 And yet corporate heretics may be the closest thing we have, in our self-contradictory time, to a true conscience of large organizations. Many of them have lost their jobs or failed to reach their potential because they would not turn back from the truth they saw. Despite all of these frustrations, it is better to be a heretic than to have one’s soul wither through the denial of a truth. And in the end, the corporations of our time are much, much better because heretics existed.” Pp. 13-14.

The Age of Heretics – The History of Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management: Copyright © 2008 by Art Kleiner – Published by Jossey-Bass: