BOOK REVIEW
Book Title: Another Way: Building Companies That Last… and Last… and Last
Author: Dave Whorton with Bo Burlingham
Publisher: HBR Press – Boston, Massachusetts
List Price: $32.00
Format: Hardcover, 202 pages
Publication Date: May 2025
ISBN: 979-8-89279-113-7
Reviewer: Gauranga Deka, PMP
Review Date: August 2025
Introduction
The book “Another Way: Building Companies That Last…and Last…and Last” is a thoughtful attempt by the authors Dave Whorton and Bo Burlingham to explore an alternative way to conceptualize, build and sustain high value companies rather than to follow a “Get-Big-Fast” principle each time. This book describes seven principles that defines an evergreen company. It also gives the founders and the business leaders, some level of realistic confidence that, though difficult, it is possible to build and run successful organization that can sustain for a very long time following a rather traditional approach.
Overview of Book’s Structure
This book is divided into three distinct parts having to total of thirteen chapters. Each chapter represents a set of distinct principles and thoughts with solid explanation and citing appropriate examples.
PART ONE – GET BIG FAST
- Chapter 1 – The Education of a Silicon Valley VC
- Chapter 2 – Two Roads Diverged
- Chapter 3 – To the Valley
PART TWO- A LEARNING JOURNEY
- Chapter 4 – Gathering in Sun Valley
- Chapter 5 – Launch
- Chapter 6 – Exemplar
- Chapter 7 – Valley of Doubt
- Chapter 8 – A Great Game
- Chapter 9 – Breakthrough
PART THREE- THE EVERGREEN ADVANTAGE
- Chapter 10 – A Forest of Evergreens
- Chapter 11 – Big Evergreens
- Chapter 12 – Evergreens’ Nine Rules of Innovation
- Chapter 13 – It’s about Time
Highlights
In the book “Another Way: Building Companies That Last…and Last…and Last” (Harvard Business Review Press – Boston, Massachusetts, 2025), the authors brought up an idea of “Evergreen Companies”. The primary author Dave Whorton was a former venture capitalist. He, along with Bo Burlingham made a commendable attempt to establish that there’s a better way to build valuable companies than the current Silicon Valley model of “Get-Big-Fast”.
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How to cite this work: Deka, G. (2025). Another Way: Building Companies That Last… and Last… and Last, book review, PM World Journal, Vol. XIV, Issue IV, April. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/pmwj157-Oct2025-Deka-Another-Way-Building-Companies-that-Last-book-review.pdf
About the Reviewer
Gauranga Deka
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX USA
Gauranga Deka, PMP, PMI-ACP, SAFe SPC4 is an IT Project Manager with expertise in building complex software solutions. Currently, he is a member of Project Management Institute & PMI Dallas Chapter. In last 20+ years, he has been leading critical roles in the development of very large, complex, mission critical software applications in Banking/Financial Services Domain. He is well versed in Data Engineering & Analytics, AI, Information Security, Agile, Scaled Agile framework (SAFe) & Water fall model of software development process. Mr. Deka has authored & published scholarly articles on software project management topics. He regularly reviews articles on the project management area, some of which are published on PM World Journals periodically. As a mentor specialist of PMI Dallas Chapter, he guides young project managers/agile practitioners in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area & also participates on expert panel to discuss important topics that influences contemporary project management processes in the PM Symposium at the University of Texas at Dallas TX.
Gauranga Deka received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MANIT, Bhopal & Executive MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
He can be contacted at G_deka@yahoo.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaurangadeka
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