Brain of the Firm

Stafford Beer is undoubtedly among the world's most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management, and he records his thinking with a flair that is unmatched. His writing is as much art as it is science. He is the most viable system I know.

—Dr Russell L Ackoff, The Institute for Interactive Management, Pennsylvania, USA

If anyone can make it [Operations Research] understandably readable and positively interesting, it is Stafford Beer. Everyone in management should be grateful to him for using clear and at times elegant English and even elegant diagrams.

—The Economist

This is the second edition of a book which has already become a management 'standard' both in universities and on the bookshelves of managers and their advisers. Brain of the Firm develops an account of the firm based upon insights derived from the study of the human nervous system, and is a basic text from the author's theory of viable systems. Despite the neurophysiology, the book is written for managers to understand. The companion volume to this book is The Heart of Enterprise, which is intended to support and complement this text.

Stafford Beer's works represent required reading for everyone who believes that a capacity for rigorous thinking is an essential attribute of today's successful managers and administrators. Brain of the Firm shows a first-rate intellect at work and provides concepts, models, and inspiration for both practitioners and teachers.

—Sir Douglas Hague, CBE