Amazon Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review to be helpful:
Excellent Case Collection and Synthesis, December 14, 2006
By S. Albertson
I think the first reviewer missed the point (or several points) about this book. As the title indicates, the book *is* about "getting to scale" and growing beyond being "small" and "local." While she doesn't at all dismiss small and local businesses, these aren't the focus of her book. Maybe her next one will be, but this one isn't.
Any book that is a collection of case studies by definition leaves some examples out (like Whole Foods). Bamburg describes a wide range of companies, and it's impossible to compare them just based on the balance sheet or income statements. She provides the data available to give the reader a sense of the size of the enterprise. Where it's lacking, I'm betting it's because the company may be privately held and unwilling to make this information available. Not unusual at all.
"Small Giants" is a great book, and in my opinion, complimentary to Bamburg. In the same way that no company is "pure" from a sustainability point of view, it's not clear to me that 100% local businesses represent the solution to our problems. There are things that I need (and yes, want) that are not produced in my bioregion, and companies that have figured out a least-harmful way to procure these things for me are ones that I will support. And I'm betting many of these are companies that have "gotten to scale" in the way Ms. Bamburg writes.
This book isn't a manual, but a collection of example companies that have been successful, grown to a certain level of scale, and have not sacrificed the values and intentions they started out with. Are they perfect? No. Do some of them make things that I don't like? Absolutely. But I learned a lot from Bamburg's excellent book, and I think anyone interested in businesses that are attempting to tread lightly on the planet and treat people with respect and dignity should read it.
3 of 3 people found the following review to be helpful:
An Excellent Guideline, October 25, 2006
By John Matlock
There has been a growing interest in socially responsible businesses. Many of them have been started by entrepreneurs who subsequently realized that in order to grow to their maximum potential that they would have to sell out to one of the mega-corporations. There are several reasons for this the most important of which is better access to capital and markets. The small company simply doesn't have the resources to last through a bad turn in the economy or to expand nation or world wide as rapidly as needed.
The author is dean of the MBA program at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute which offers programs focused on sustainable business. This is an unusual program since most MBA programs are oriented to train people to work as managers in huge companies.
In this book she identifies nine critical issues that must be managed well if a business is to grow yet preserve the independence desired by the founders.
Having formed such a business, I can tell you that her ideas are right on. Only that I would add one more factor - luck. You may be doing everything right when Hurricane Katrina comes to visit. All in all, an excellent book.
7 of 9 people found the following review to be helpful:
Bigger isn't always greener, November 9, 2006
By Milliemathea
The central premise of this book is that the larger the business, the more potential it has to "do good". It therefore seeks to describe a formula to grow a green business to scale without sacrificing environmental and social values. Small businesses and buy local movements are dismissed out of hand as inconsequential.
To illustrate this thesis, the author examines a number of carefully chosen businesses that best support it, showing how these companies have taken Other People's Money without sacrificing values. She leaves out a few obvious elephants in the room, most notably the publicly traded Whole Foods, which would directly contradict her thesis. She also includes a few companies that practice no discernable ethics of sustainability, including a toy manufacturer whose plastic products are made in China and sold to mass merchandisers. She lauds the company only because it has chosen not to make toy guns and claims, quite incorrectly, that no better example exists in the toy industry.
Further, the author withholds key information such as annual revenue for many of her profiled companies, reporting these numbers as N/A. Does this mean the company has no sales or simply didn't want to share them? In the case of a real estate firm, she reports a huge revenue amount, which seems to reflect the total value of the real estate the firm sold--hardly comparable to the total value of widgets that a manufacturing company sells. In both cases, her profiles provide little information and no context to compare these business to other similar businesses.
Laudable organizations like Co-Op America have been promoting this book as a how-to to create a viable sustainable business. In my opinion, our economy and our environment would be better served by well-run and sustainably-minded small businesses dedicated to thinking globally and acting locally. A better guide to creating a responsible and sustainable business is Bo Burlingham's "Small Giants", which argues the converse thesis, offering numerous detailed examples of companies that have made huge differences in their communities by choosing to remain small and perfecting their businesses at the local level.
Although Getting to Scale offers some interesting profiles of a few successful companies, it offers no real recipe for creating one, offers incomplete facts, and backs its argument with hand-picked case studies.
~dan
2 of 2 people found the following review to be helpful:
Helpful examples; no perfect answer, December 18, 2006
By Paul S. Hudnut
First, a caveat. I know the author. I think she is a wonderful person; smart, committed to change, a change maker. With this book she is addressing a key question. One that goes to the heart of capitalism and globalization. If it isn't possible to "scale up" a mission based company without selling out (either the company's ideal, or by a "liquidity event) then we have a real problem, don't we?
Unlike the reviewer below, I think that this book goes well with "Small Giants". The subtitle of Small Giants is "How some companies choose to be great, instead of big." It is in the tradition of "Built to Last" and "Good to Great". And let's be frank... none of the companies in either book are Exxon or GM size companies. Of course, while the press focuses on the big guys, the US economy is driven by small business. That is where the growth, innovation and employment is.
What is going on in both books is that the authors are providing examples that are important: companies that have a purpose beyond just "maximizing shareholder return." This means the companies need to make some choices, choices that are not always obvious, unless you read these books. When companies grow, they get new stakeholders (employees, investors, customers). Does this growth necessarily dilute mission? Both these books provide some examples. They provide hope. But, until we have a "green" Microsoft or Google, I guess that people can continue to argue. And some folks seem to think business is inherently evil, so no matter how well intentioned, any enterprise will end up having a bad effect. I don't really care if those people read this book. But if these books provide an example that inspire entrepreneurs to not only "Just do it" but "Just do it with purpose" that would be great. Paul Hawken probably didn't expect that his book would inpire Ray Anderson to remake Interface. I hope these books inspire many less famous "remakes" and begin to inspire a number of companies that take these ideas and bring them to new industries and regions of the world.
I'd spend the money and read both if you are interested in building a company that has a purpose. That you want to get up every day and work on. And where you feel you will need other's help. One thing is for sure, if you don't have the goal in mind, there are plenty of forces conspiring to dilute your idea. And, as all entrepreneurs know, taking action is hard, and attracts many critics. But building a company can be a positive act of change. Reading this book will help you think through the issues in building a mission based business and scaling it up.
1 of 1 people found the following review to be helpful:
How businesses can both have positive impacts and become bigger and more effective., November 5, 2006
By Midwest Book Review
Written by Jill Bamburg (dean of the MBA program at the Bainbridge Graduation Institute), Getting To Scale: Growing Your Business Without Selling Out draws upon interviews with more than thirty growth-oriented entrepreneurs to deliver readers the straight scoop on what to take into account when deciding just how much one's business should expand. Debunking myths such as "you have to sell out to grow", Getting to Scale addresses how to responsibly increase business size while maintaining ownership and control, how to adapt to corporate culture, how to access greater capital and markets, and much more. Written in plain, no-nonsense terms, Getting To Scale is emphatically recommended for anyone scaling up the size of the business - whether simply opening a second storefront, taking the step to incorporate, or going global.
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