PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow

This week, I will be reviewing Chip Conley’s book, Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow (Jossey-Bass, 2007).

Entrepreneur and founder of the Joie de Vivre hotel company in San Francisco, Chip Conley has developed innovative waya to use an old theory to talk about a new approach to motivation. And he’s not the only one doing so these days. Take, for instance, the writing of Dan Pink whose latest book, DRIVE, has previously been reviewed on this blog.

Conley applies Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and expands it to cover three critical audiences that relate to a business: Employees, Customers, and Investors. You remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs from that mandatory sociology class in your sophomore year of college, don’t you? If not we’ll review it and several new triangles to which Conley applies Maslow to. Obviously, to understand Conley’s revealing and inspirational theory, you’ll need to read this book from cover to cover. It’s well worth taking your time to read this one.