A Bigger Prize

A visionary business writer shows how to acheive success in all areas of life--by not competing for it.

Tiger mothers stand by with tutors to make sure schoolchildren keep pace. At college, deepening debt is the only way to stay ahead. In the world of work, bond traders and derivatives sellers push ever-riskier products onto unsuspecting customers, themselves eager to pay for a lifestyle that demonstrates how well they're doing.

How did we get sucked into a worldview that has proved so destructive, anti-social and wasteful? Whatever made us believe that competition would reward the smartest people, the greatest products, the best companies? Why do we trust that competitive games, markets and tests will magically identify the just winner? Surrounded by over-complex technology and cheap and tawdry merchandise, how could we imagine that competition is anything other than a force or devastation and waste?

In her brilliant new book, Margaret Heffernan reveals how blind pursuit of success in business and life limits our opportunities and keeps us from positive choices. She argues that instead of allowing ourselves to be slaves to competition, we should tap into natural reserves of altruism, collaboration and cooperation. Those talents are innate and genetically hardwired, ripe for development, primed for innovation.

Drawing on the latest scientific and economic research and her own numerous interviews with everyone from captains of industry to neuroscientists to Olympic athletes, Margaret Heffernan debunks competition as the ultimate answer to our biggest questions. But in doing so she reveals its positive aspects that until now have gone largely unacknowledged. This superbly readable book shows us how to do competition differently--and better--in business and in life.

MARGARET HEFFERNAN was born in Texas, raised in Holland and educated at Cambridge University. Her monthly column for Reader's Digest is read by over 8 million readers. She writes articles that are syndicated internationally, and blogs for The Huffington Post. A popular speaker and panelist, and former producer for BBC radio in the UK, she continues to develop programs for the BBC. As an entrepreneur she has built up two businesses: one advising public affair campaigns in Massachusetts and another advising software companies trying to break into multimedia. Over the period that she worked for CMGI, its stock increased over 700%. Her books are The Naked Truth, an expose of the environment for working women, Women on Top, about female CEOs, and Willful Blindness. She is a Visiting Professor at the Simmons School of Management and at the University of Bath and is Executive in Residence at Babson College. She has homes in the UK and in New Hampshire.