Visiting professor and entrepreneur, Margaret Heffernan launches new book
In her new book How She Does It: Redefining power and the nature of success for the 21st century, Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship Margaret Heffernan examines the success of women-run companies. Women-run companies are more likely to stay in business than the average U.S. firm, to grow at three times the average rate, create jobs at twice the average rate and produce profits faster, according to former CEO and BBC producer Heffernan.
To find out why, Heffernan interviewed hundreds of women entrepreneurs - including Eileen Fisher and Geraldine Laybourne - who run businesses of all sizes and in all markets. Her research found that women business owners typically possess the characteristics experts think are needed in 21st-century businesses: combining “discipline, focus, detachment, and systematic thinking with playfulness, empathy, and design.”
She found that many women started their own businesses after working for corporations that didn’t respect or listen to them. In charge of their own companies, their abilities to assert their values, nurture their employees and customers, “orchestrate” rather than “command and control,” emphasize collaboration rather than competition, stay open to change, ask for help, learn from mistakes and make time for family became a formula for success.
For book extracts, previews, blog entries, the author’s bio and more, go to
http://www.mheffernan.com.
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