Tom Peters

Fortune called Tom Peters the Ur-guru of management, and compares him to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and H.L. Mencken. The Economist tagged him the Uber-guru; and BusinessWeek's take on his "unconventional views" led them to label him business' best friend and worst nightmare. The Bloomsbury Press book Movers and Shakers reviewed the contributions of 125 business and management thinkers and practitioners, from Machiavelli and JP Morgan to Tom and Jack Welch. Tom's summary entry:
"Tom Peters has probably done more than anyone else to shift the debate on management from the confines of boardrooms, academia, and consultancies to a broader, worldwide audience, where it has become the staple diet of the media and managers alike. Peter Drucker has written more and his ideas have withstood a longer test of time, but it is Peters-as consultant, writer, columnist, seminar lecturer, and stage performer-whose energy, style, influence, and ideas have shaped new management thinking."

Tom co-authored In Search of Excellence; the book was named by NPR as one of the "Top Three Business Books of the Century," and ranked as the "greatest business book of all time" in a poll by Britain's Bloomsbury Publishing. Tom followed Search with a string of international bestsellers: A Passion for Excellence (with Nancy Austin), Thriving on Chaos, Liberation Management (acclaimed as the "Management Book of the Decade" for the '90s), The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations, The Pursuit of WOW!; The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness; and a series of books on Reinventing Work: The Brand You50, The Project50 and The Professional Service Firm50. Tom and publisher Dorling-Kindersley released Re-imagine: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age; the revolutionary book, an immediate No.1 international best seller, aims to do no less than re-invent the business book through vibrant, energetic presentation of critical ideas. His most recent publication highlights his major ideas in a four book series called Tom Peters' Essentials : Trends, Leadership, Design, and Talent.

Two Tom Peters biographies have been published: Corporate Man to Corporate Skunk: The Tom Peters Phenomenon and Tom Peters: The Bestselling Prophet of the Management Revolution (part of a four-book series of business biographies on Peters, Bill Gates, Peter Drucker, and Warren Buffet). In an in-depth analytic study released by Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change, Peters scored 2nd among the top 50 "Business Intellectuals," behind Michael Porter and ahead of Peter Drucker.

Leadership guru Warren Bennis, the only person who knows both Peter Drucker and Tom personally, told a reporter, "If Peter Drucker invented modern management, Tom Peters vivified it." In fact, as even Tom's book titles indicate, his passion is passion: Destruction & Disruption & Re-imaginings ... Talent Liberation for a Brand You/WOW Projects World ... Creativity, Game-changing Innovation & Sustained Entrepreneurship. Tom's newest passions are for Women-as-Leaders; the Supreme Role of Design in product and service differentiation; the Creation of Customer Experiences that rival a Cirque du Soleil performance; capturing the enormous, underserved market represented by Women and Boomers-Geezers; Re-imagining Education for a Creative Age; and reorienting healthcare from "fix-it-after-the-fact" to Wellness-Prevention. And pursuing Excellence Variety ... Tom's first "return to excellence" in 22 years.

Tom writes, reflects and then presents about 75 major seminars-"happenings" each year, half outside the U.S. His other passion is creating and participating in Web-based and "live" radical learning communities-in an effort to induce leaders to vigorously embrace the "Technicolor Times"