Organizing Genius
- Author
- Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman
- Published
- 1997
- Pages
- 239
- Recommended
- 2 times
Why it’s on the list: Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman’s study of seven “Great Groups” — the Manhattan Project, Disney’s animators, Xerox PARC, Lockheed’s Skunk Works and the 1992 Clinton campaign among them — and what they had in common.
Where I heard about it
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Sarah Guo’s thread — named (twice) in the replies to her March 2025 question on X: “is there a book / essay about environments that best support scientific discovery? Not about specifically bell labs, cavendish, xerox parc, los alamos - but why these places were so productive?” It was the anchor text for the reading-group syllabus saved in the same thread. Full set of replies: Is There a Book… (tweet).
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On Patrick Collison’s Bookshelf — Patrick Collison’s catalog of the physical books he owns (unflagged). Saved in Kyle’s April 19th, 2020 Roam daily note.
Connections
- Organizing Genius — A Reading Group Proposal — Matt Clifford’s 2019 reading-group syllabus, built around this book, archived from the same thread.
- Manhattan Project · Xerox PARC · Skunk Works · Lockheed Martin — four of the seven case studies.
- Company Building · Organizational Culture — the portfolio idea and the theme.