William Taylor

Bill Taylor is a provocative and inspiring voice on the future of business'an agenda-setting writer, speaker, and entrepreneur who has shaped the global conversation about the best ways to compete, innovate, and succeed. The arrival of his new book, Mavericks at Work, promises to once again change how companies and their leaders navigate a fast-moving world and devise strategies that win in the marketplace. Mavericks is an inspiring and effective collection of next practices that amounts to a business plan for the 21st century.

Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win is the result of in-depth access to 32 of the world's most creative and disruptive competitors'organizations that are thriving in the marketplace by rethinking the logic of how business gets done.Just weeks after its release, it became a New York Times Bestsller, a Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller and a BusinessWeek Bestseller, and has attracted worldwide attention and acclaim. ABC's Good Morning America devoted two segments (called "Maverick Monday") to the book, and NBC's Weekend Today devoted a segment to the book's vision of the new workplace. Mavericks has been the subject of high-profile articles, reviews, and columns in many top publications, including U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, and The Economist, which called the book "a pivotal work in the tradition of In Search of Excellence and Good to Great." The Economist also named Mavericks one of its "Books of the Year, 2006." Other accolades include: "Top Ten Business Book of The Year" (amazon.com), "Top Ten Book on Innovation and Design" (Business Week), and "2006 Picks of the Year in Business Books" (The Financial Times).

In addition to its launch in North America, Mavericks will be published in Europe, Australia, Japan, the rest of Asia (a Chinese-language edition), and Brazil (a Portuguese-language edition). The word-of-mouth buzz keeps building. "I didn't just 'read' this book, I devoured it!" declared management guru Tom Peters. James J. Cramer, co-founder of TheStreet.com and host of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, had this to say: "If Mavericks at Work had come out before I started TheStreet.com, I could have saved my investors (and myself) $100 million-because I would have been able to take the lessons in the book and apply them every day to my business."

Mavericks at Work may be Bill's newest project, but it's just the latest chapter in a career devoted to challenging conventional wisdom and showcasing the power of business at its best. As a cofounder and founding editor of Fast Company, Bill launched a magazine that won countless awards, earned a passionate following among executives and entrepreneurs around the world'and became a legendary business success. In less than six years, an enterprise that took shape in some borrowed office space in Harvard Square sold for $340 million.

Fast Company, which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, has won just about every award there is to win in the magazine world, from "Startup of the Year" to "Magazine of the Year" to two coveted National Magazine Awards. In 2004, In recognition of Fast Company's impact on business, Bill was named "Champion of Workplace Learning and Performance" by the American Society of Training and Development. Past winners of the award include Jack Welch of GE and Fred Smith of FedEx.

Bill is an adjunct professor at Babson College, America's top-rated school for entrepreneurship, where he created the "Maverick Seminar at Babson College"a unique academic program in which MBA students interact with the ideas and innovators creating the future of business. He is the co-author of three other books on strategy, leadership, and innovation: The Big Boys: Power and Position in American Business, No-Excuses Management, and Going Global.

Bill has published numerous essays and CEO interviews in The Harvard Business Review, and his monthly column, Under New Management, ran in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. A graduate of Princeton University and the MIT Sloan School of Management, he lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.