Garten uses his interviews with 40 household names--including Intel's Andy Grove, GE's Jack Welch, PepsiCo's Roger Enrico, and AOL's Steve Case--to articulate his own questions and strategies for CEOs to thrive during the "third Industrial Revolution." He interprets these interviews through the lens of his tenures on Wall Street, at Yale, and as President Clinton's Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade. Among the challenges he analyzes: what CEOs are doing (or must do) to win the Internet wars and meet the challenges of going global, why CEOs must emphasize the "true north" of consistent values, and how a shareholder is different from a stakeholder. With great clarity, he details the demise of several CEOs who resigned under pressure, including Aetna's Richard Huber and Xerox's Richard Thoman, and suggests that "a vision without execution is a hallucination."
Yet Garten's core concern--and one where he is most passionate--is how to expand the leadership role of CEOs on the world stage. He urges leaders to curb their ethnocentrism and to take more responsibility for creating a world environment in which everyone can prosper. By framing this issue of leaders as world citizens, Garten raises smart and searching questions for a wired world economy. --Barbara Mackoff