About Lead, Follow or Fail

Dust Jacket Blurbs Reviews/Media

Describing a multi-millennia journey only recently marked by prosperity, Lead, Follow, or Fail captures the socio-economic forces shaping our world. Dividing economic history into three eras—Pre-Industrial, Industrial, and Post-Industrial—the book chronicles productivity’s evolution and how nations, organizations, and individuals fall into the roles of Failures, Followers, or Leaders. Failures trapped in pre-industrial conditions are plagued by scarcity, Followers are on their way to abundance through industrialization, and Leaders maintain wealth through unrelenting innovation at the leading edge of post-industrial commerce.

Understanding the transition across these eras and how Leading, Following, and Failing differ also offers insight into our economic future. After considering the implications of a world more economically diverse than ever before, three future scenarios—balanced global growth, unbalanced global growth, and global meltdown—conclude the book. Armed with the knowledge of what it takes to build and sustain competitiveness whether Leader, Follower, or Failure, readers learn what to do to ensure balanced global growth prevails so the 21st century is a triumph for us all.

The closing pages also focus on what Americans should do to ensure their country remains a Leader working alongside others to ensure the best future prevails. America’s biggest enemy is neither the Chinese nor those crossing its borders in search of better lives. It is those wishing to isolate it from a changing world as their fears and insecurities are pandered to. Only leaders who acknowledge the challenges facing the country—many identified in the book—and who offer bipartisan solutions to conquer them will mobilize Americans to save their country from itself.

For readers in North America and developed Europe, Asia, and Oceania, insights include:

• Following industrial assembly line work, human input has advanced to post-industrial creative and transformative work, and why post-industrial workers should aspire to join the creative cores of organizations they work for and the paths to join these are explained.

• How vertically integrated industrial organizations differ from the disaggregated, tightly-coupled, multi-partner networks that characterize post-industrial organization.

• Through analysis of firms such as Microsoft, Amazon, Caterpillar, Cisco, and Ford, how wealth created per person exploded in post-industrial organizations and why measures such as net income or market value per person are now more important than return on assets or capital employed, both important industrial organization measures.

The book is also written for those wishing to understand how both industrialized and industrializing countries may progress over the 21st century. Among other insights readers learn:

• With a population too large to permit economic take-off, India may stumble—important for nations with growing populations, and with a population shrinking too fast, China may be unable to support its aging population—important for those facing population decline.

• That modern distributive democracy and free-market economics are unsuited to early industrialization, and that nations are now expected to industrialize under conditions Western nations did not face in their early industrializations.

• Through analysis of the industrializations of China, India, Brazil, Taiwan, South Africa, Singapore, and South Korea, how early industrialization is negotiated and the transition to modern democratic states is accomplished.

• What the United States and other Leaders must do to continue inspiring and guiding others as they move from Failure to Follower to Leader over the rest of this century.

“Dr. Brews’s coverage of humankind’s economic progress is as comprehensive as it is original, and he explains how our past and present often impair our futures in a profound way. His analysis of the United States and its imbalances is pertinent to Americans and those in leading countries. Lead, Follow, or Fail provides actionable suggestions that will be useful to organizations, governments, and individuals as they seek to understand the pathways to leadership and the challenges that must be managed. It is a beautiful walk through time culminating with valuable insights that are critical in assessing current positions and future actions.” —LLOYD JOHNSON, Retired Senior Executive at Accenture and Board Chair at AARP

“I’ve seen firsthand how Dr. Brews’s insistence that all students graduate data proficient and analytical capable has changed the lives of the many thousands studying at the Darla Moore School of Business, and his well-founded understanding of nation-building and what is needed to remain globally competitive reaches even more in these pages. Powerful and weighty, his ideas are worthy of close study.” —DARLA MOORE, American Financier and Philanthropist

“Meticulously researched and data rich, Lead, Follow, or Fail’s coverage of industrial versus post-industrial business provides invaluable insights for business professionals wherever they compete. Most impressive is how Peter Brews explains the creative work Leaders must do to remain ahead as others Follow. He connects the big ideas of today’s innovators with emerging trends in technology as well as with new structures of government and policy. The result is a new road map for developing strategy and understanding competitive markets.” —DR. ALBERT SEGARS, Author of The Idea Chase and PNC Distinguished Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“Lead, Follow, or Fail’s coverage of business worldwide is comprehensive, and its articulation of the challenges Leaders, Followers, and Failures face and how to remedy them is important for all to consider in business and beyond. Dr. Brews’s statement that an isolationist conflicted America is bad for the country and the world is timely, and his notion that a more equitable, cleaner, better-balanced nation is within reach should be heeded by all Americans especially. The message of hope embedded in these pages is required reading for all concerned about the future.” —DR. KENDALL ROTH, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Executive Director, Center for International Business Education and Research, University of South Carolina

“Lead, Follow, or Fail provokes, challenges, and educates even more than the author’s award-winning classes did. Its background research and depth enrich the conversation considerably. For those wanting insight into who we are, how we got here, and the choices we face going forward, this is a must-read!” —ALAN GOLDING, Senior Strategy and Operations Officer, The World Bank, and former UNC Executive MBA student

Kirkus Review (posted September 18, 2024)

A thoughtful and exacting discussion of the economic future.

Brews’ empirically rigorous study deftly manages to combine a panoramic historical survey with a granular account of the machinations of productivity. While the subject matter is inherently complex and the text often technically formidable, his explanations are consistently accessible to even readers with limited backgrounds in economics. Predictions of any kind are always to be taken with a grain of salt, but the author presents his persuasively, without the grating push of dogmatic certainty. There is an astute political dimension to his analysis; for example, “As other nations join the post-industrial world, democracy’s dominance over other regime types may be where convergence occurs. All industrialized nations today are democracies, and no autocracy is yet fully industrialized. Time will tell if China or other autocracies will industrialize and remain nondemocratic.” Much of the writing on economics today falls into two categories: prohibitively dense academic studies or more popular works that indulge in extravagant simplifications and reductions. Brews’ book belongs to a rare third category: analysis that is serious without being indecipherable and that comments pragmatically on the hurdles that must be cleared for a bright future. This is a valuable contribution to the literature on productivity for experts and novices alike.