Being original

So there must be lots you have already read on being original.. Here's one more book on this - Mavericks at Work by William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre.

I bought this book because the TOC (Table of Contents) looked very interesting. The book is full of anecdotes of "maverick stories" from the world over. So, if you are probably looking for success stories and "being different and successful" stories, you will probably devour this book.

However, I expect a book to evolve some theory that can probably been used by other people. Just asking you to "be different" doesnt suffice, because the statement itself says that you have to do something that hasnt been done before.. so anecdotes are nice, but insufficient for authors stated goals. ("...opens your eyes, engages your imagination, and encourages you to think bigger and aim higher..."). The authors claim that "...this is more than a how-to book. It is a what-if book." At least I seem to have totally missed either claim in the book.

Having said that, I found the Goldcorp story (mining geologists heads worldwide) very interesting. Some other stories on interesting business models using the internet are a good read too (TopCoder, Wikipedia, Health research, etc; though I am not sure why the authors have given so much emphasis to open-source).

I do wish to put the same question to the authors, that I asked in an earlier blog - what % of company success can be attributable to CEOs? I have a feeling that it would be 100% if the CEO is a mavrick! So the new question is - does a CEO become a maverick before or after his success??