The Geek Way Audiobook By Andrew McAfee cover art

The Geek Way

The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime
Try for $0.00
More purchase options

The Geek Way

By: Andrew McAfee
Narrated by: Andrew McAfee, Sean Patrick Hopkins
Try for $0.00

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $25.19

Buy for $25.19

The Geek Way reveals a new way to get big things done and shows how to change the way you think about work, teams, projects, and culture, and give you the insight and tools you need to harness our human superpowers of learning and cooperation.

"A handbook for disruptors." —Eric Schmidt

What is “being geeky?” It’s being a perennially curious person, one who's not afraid to tackle hard problems and embrace unconventional solutions. McAfee shows how the geeks have created a new culture based around four norms: science, ownership, speed, and openness. The geek way seems odd at first. It's not deferential to experts, fond of planning and process, afraid of mistakes, or obsessed with "winning." But it explains everything from why Montessori babies turn out to be creative tinkerers to how newcomers are disrupting industry after industry (and still just getting started).

When all four norms are in place, a culture emerges that is freewheeling, fast-moving, egalitarian, evidence-driven, argumentative, and autonomous. Why does the geek way work so much better? McAfee provides an original answer: because it taps into humanity's superpower, which is our ability to cooperate intensely and learn rapidly. By providing insights from the young discipline of cultural evolution, McAfee shows that when we come together under the right conditions, we quickly figure out how to build reusable spaceships and self-correcting organizations. Under the wrong conditions, though, we create bureaucracy, chronic delays, cultures of silence, and the other classic dysfunctions of the Industrial Era.

Mixing cutting-edge science, history, analysis, and stories that show the geek way in action, McAfee offers a new way to see the world and empowering tools for seizing the big opportunities of today and tomorrow.

The Economist's Best Books of 2023
Forbes' Top 10 Business Books of 2023
Financial Time' Monthly Best Business Books to Read Pick Management & Leadership Geeky Business Management Inspiring Leadership Psychology Psychology & Mental Health
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c

Critic reviews

“[A] smart, irreverent, informative guide to navigating the future of work. Companies that don’t follow The Geek Way, according to author Andy McAfee, will fall behind...Each of these simple words contains more than you can know, until you read this remarkable book.”—Amy C. Edmondson, Professor of Leadership & Management, Harvard Business School, and author of Right Kind of Wrong
"In industry after industry, corporate boards are asking management what their plan is to thrive in an unsettled, fast-changing environment. The Geek Way contains among the best answers I've seen to this critical question."—Dambisa Moyo, Global Economist; Member, House of Lords
"I've worked closely with Andy for more than a decade, I'm still blown away by this book. It's bold and original, relevant and rigorous, and immediately useful for any restless, curious innovator. In other words, for any geek."—Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and co-author of the New York Times bestselling The Second Machine Age
“Juxtaposed to our outsized celebrity obsessed culture is the rise of a subtler but infinitely more powerful shift toward geek culture. The hegemony of geekdom in Silicon Valley and across the world is the underlying force that drives innovation and powers our economy. Andrew McAfee’s The Geek Way is the guidebook for understanding this shift and navigating these turbulent times.”—Richard Florida, bestselling author of The Rise of the Creative Class and The New Urban Crisis
“By combining management theory, competitive strategy, the science of evolution, psychology, military history, and cultural anthropology, McAfee has produced a remarkable work of synthesis that finally explains, with a single unified theory (which he dubs "the geek way") the reasons why the tech startup approach has taken over so much of the world.”—Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and New York Times bestselling author of The Start Up of You
"How fast can you find out you are wrong? This is the predictive metric of success in Silicon Valley. Mcafee explains why the leaders who build organizations that will help everyone who works there learn really quickly whether they are right or wrong will win in the new economy. And he shows why the leaders who allow their success to dampen their eagerness to hear about it when they are wrong have sown the seeds of their own failure. Essential!"—Kim Scott, author of the New York Times bestselling Radical Candor and Radical Respect
Actionable Insights • Valuable Concepts • Informative Content • Clear Vision • Researched Findings

Highly rated for:

All stars
Most relevant
I liked how this reframed a lot of what we already know to make it relevant. However, I found the references repetitive.

Good framing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It’s refreshing to hear modern ideas and approaches to running an organization. Build and iterate. These concepts go beyond the tech world. Failure should not be seen as an end but a beginning of a new set of ideas.

Refreshing Organizational Theory

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Finally I’ve found what I’ve been thinking for years articulated clearly with great examples. I wish all of my peers would read/listen to this!

Should be part of corporate training everywhere

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Mostly sad to see that diversity is not part of the growth. Identifying the difference of growth vs start up mentality.

The examples of failure and correction! Addressing culture as a Nile river wide and deep!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I hate business culture books. This is different. This is it. Read it and learn or be beaten by those who have.
In the spirit of the book. There are a few passages that feel bolted on. Like they were added by a diversity professional. They don’t detract from the book’s brilliant themes.

Will be a classic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews