Bo Burlingham : League of Extraordinary Minds Expert Panelist

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Bo Burlingham

Bo Burlingham is the author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big (Portfolio, 2006) and an Editor-at-large of Inc. magazine.

My story in brief: I joined Inc. in January 1983 as a senior editor and became executive editor six months later, a position I held for the next seven years or so. In 1990, I resigned and became editor-at-large for a number of reasons, including my desire to go back to writing. I subsequently wrote two books with Jack Stack, the co-founder and CEO of Springfield Remanufacturing Corp. and the pioneer of open-book management. One of the books, The Great Game of Business (Doubleday/Currency, 1992), has sold more than 300,000 copies. (It explains what open-book management is and how it works in practice at the company that does it best.) The other, A Stake in the Outcome (Doubleday/Currency, 2002), has also done pretty well and gotten great reviews. (It’s a book you should read if you want to know what it really takes to run an employee-owned company.)

Before joining Inc., I freelanced for various publications, including Esquire, Harper’s, Boston Magazine, and Mother Jones. I was also managing editor of Ramparts magazine for a while, if anyone can remember back that far. In 1982, I joined Fidelity Investments, where I wrote for Peter Lynch, Ned Johnson, and other honchos until coming to Inc. From 1992 to 1997, I served on the board of The Body Shop Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of the international cosmetics company. I was also a founder, with Tom Peters, of PAC World, a weird international networking group that gave me a chance to meet a lot of zany—and brilliant—people from around the globe.

What else? I’ve been married 35 years to my wonderful wife, Lisa. We have two children and one fabulous grandson, with a granddaughter on the way. We live…well, that’s a long story. Let’s just say I’m always at large.