I have long been a fan of Eric Ries’s work, dating back to his breakout (now classic) The Lean Startup.
Ries has a knack for taking a constellation of powerful ideas (both well-established and his own) and
putting them into a simple but compelling formulation, brought to life by compelling examples, often
from Ries’s own experiences.

This latest book continues in this tradition, but takes on a far more ambitious, one might even say,
revolutionary tone. Whereas The Lean Startup focuses on the task of launching a successful startup,
Incorruptible aims at the problem of maintaining the mission and purpose of startups that do become
successful, and eventually attract the attention of those seeking to cash in on this success. But beyond
offering pages of inspiration, hints, and examples of successful businesses that were able to maintain their
visions (and post mortems of numerous failures by way of warning), Ries seems to be on his own mission
to bolster the soul of the capitalist enterprise itself. In the last few chapters of the book, he displays a
brand of soaring optimism of the possibility of investor-driven capitalism to offer hope, ethos, and spir-
ital salvation, if only the lofty aspirations of “builders” might not be corrupted by forces seeking purely
financial gain.

The drama over the soul of capitalism, in Ries’s telling, is not purely a tale of good versus evil. Ries
develops adopts a concept of superorganisms from the academic social sciences that analyze how indi-
vidual members become a part of a larger social or cultural movement, and find it difficult to act based
on their own personal ethics, but instead are drawn in by the “gravity” of accepted practice. Ries details
how the history of the legal and social reality of the modern corporation has led to a situation where the
“best practice” of corporate governance is to value “shareholder primacy” above all other purposes. This
leaves mission-driven founders in a precarious position of potentially having to sacrifice their long-term
mission for short-term financial gain out of fudiciary responsibility to their founding corporate charters.
However, there is hope to change this dominant culture of shareholder primacy. Ries cites nu-
merous examples of companies that found ways to uphold their founding visions—Costco, Patagonia,
Mondragón—and still manage to financially outperform companies that sought short-term gain. The
“best practice” of shareholder primacy can also be assailed by creating new standards—like Volvo’s three-
point safety belt technology that was shared freely with all car manufacturers—or the development of
new “civic infrastructure” like Ries’s own Long Term Stock Exchange (LTSE) that attempts to limit the
power of short-term investors to drive corporations to turn their backs on their founding visions.
As for the style of the book, Ries conjures a powerful mix of anecdotes, carefully selected research,
and personal reflections that the reader can’t help but feel are words he has often said behind closed doors
in his work as a consultant, investor, and business leader, now finally available to the broader public in
the form of a book. I even sensed a hint of relief in Ries’s writing that he is finally able to articulate his
ideas for a broad audience.

As is arguably fitting for a book about mission, the tone of the book has an unmistakable “missionary”
tone. The book is largely written in a robust, often challenging, imperative tone. Numerous sentences
start with “You”, confronting the reader with instructions, challenges, and searching questions. In the
final pages of the book, Ries appears to admit that this book will be challenging to many and potentially
divisive. I don’t get the sense that Ries is looking to turn down a fight with those who peddle the “best
practices” of corporate governance, which he feels strongly is undercutting the potential of businesses. If
anything, my sense is that Ries is almost eager to court some controversy and backlash in order to call his
detractors to a higher purpose. He seems intent on bringing the “good news” of a better way of doing
business to even the most incalcitrant of readers.

I felt this missionary zeal contributes to a potentially off-putting impression of defensiveness through-
out the book. Incorruptible is a book that feels like it is steeling itself for attack. Ries recapitulates the
long-term financial performance of mission-driven companies that don’t follow “best practices” repeat-
edly in the book. This regular recapitulation of the main message is typical of the “business non-fiction”
category, but Ries seems to be even more determined to hammer home his points than usual. In the un-
corrected proof I read, I felt the pace was plodding at times. Ries mentions in the introduction that the
book could be read starting at the beginning of each of its parts, which somewhat explains my sense of “re-
hashing”, but I felt Ries’s mood of being careful and defensive better explains my feeling of “indigestion”
while reading.

After reading the whole book, I hoped that the practical advice of how to actually set up mission-
driven corporate governance structures might have appeared closer to the beginning of the text. A reader
who loses patience before reaching later chapters might get the impression that Ries is trying to sell his
own consulting services rather than provide readers with careful enough detail to learn how to become
“incorruptible” by simply reading his book. This is not an uncommon feeling for any regular reader
of this genre, but I do give credit to Ries for offering a wealth of practical and actionable advice from
Chapter 9 onwards, albeit largely in a United States-centric mold. My final impression was that Ries was
not seeking to enlist further consulting clients (I am sure he already has more than he can handle), and
was instead trying to spark a kind of movement larger than himself. Someone who only gets through the
first few chapters might not capture this vision.

But this leads to maybe my most significant critique. I am not exactly sure who the intended audience
is for Incorruptible. Certainly, the most favored protagonists in Ries’s vision of mission-driven capitalism
are what he calls the “builders”. Ostensibly, the book should appeal to these “builders” who hope to
grow their companies without compromising their foundation of “love” and “mission”. It is essentially
unquestioned that “good” companies will want to scale to bring their inspiring products, services, and
visions to the generality of humankind. One might view it as a kind of “love”-washing of eager-to-scale,
investor-driven businesses that overlook the “mission” of the many small and medium-sized businesses
that offer “love” in small doses throughout our societies. I think this goes some way to explain why Ries
offers generally optimistic views of investors, who seem to be the other main audience for this book. He
expresses his view on multiple occasions that investors want to invest in mission-driven companies, but
that it’s only “gravity” arising from a “shareholder primacy”-driven superorganism that stops them. One
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can’t help but note that Ries himself is both a ”builder” and ”investor” and his sympathies for these roles
arise naturally. But I think it also belies a vision of Big Love and Big Mission, as opposed to a “small is
beautiful” view of the world that naturally avoids the “gravity” that is endemic to scale. Ries notes in later
chapters that we can use “gravity” for good, but gravity at its most impactful is nonetheless a large body
influencing the behavior of many small bodies, for good or evil. If there are large bodies, they remain
forever susceptible to being corrupted. One can’t help but think that attempting to limit the size of any
one body might be a better way to distribute love and mission to the world.

Overall, I found Ries’s book inspiring and spirited. I truly applaud him for sharing what some might
consider a “naive” view that there is a groundswell of goodness just awaiting to be unlocked by a “more
perfect” investor capitalism. The practical advice on how to structure mission-driven businesses and the
breaking down of the received view of short-termism are surely invaluable contributions to the discourse
on corporate governance. I hope that the future finds other authors taking up the challenge of critiquing,
extending, and expanding the vision Ries bravely sets before our eyes in Incorruptible.