Incorruptible

You’ve heard this story many times. An entrepreneur starts a company with a passionate vision to change the world: giving people healthier food choices, marketing a revolutionary new technology, curing a chronic illness. Eventually, they lose control of the company to entities with less noble motives. The founder’s beautiful vision succumbs to destructive extraction. It’s happened many times: Boeing selling out its engineering culture, Johnson & Johnson compromising its values, Whole Foods losing its independence, etc. Some cases (e.g., Boeing) result in the loss of human life. But the tragedy isn’t just that the mission is compromised: in many cases, the company also succumbs, taking with it jobs and investor and customer value. Incorruptible argues it doesn’t need to be like this. Ries analyzes the forces that cause founders to lose control of their companies — primarily, what he calls “financial gravity”: the seemingly inexorable pull of near-term ROI. He then offers alternatives…