Long Fuse, Big Bang: Achieving Long-Term Success Through Daily Victories »

A neuroscientist—-and corporate executive—-reveals that the key to making a thriving business is contained in the physiology of the brain and shows how to transform puny firecrackers into big sticks of dynamite.

Publishers Weekly

Haseltine's studies of the brain have aided him in senior positions with the NSA, Disney Imagineering, and Hughes Aircraft and make this a scholarly, packed analysis. Relying on his own experiences and case studies of pioneering companies like IBM, Disney, and Wal-Mart, Haseltine makes a convincing case that our short-term, put-out-the-fire mentality makes us miss opportunities that come from long-term thinking. In compelling, well-researched examples from a number of fields, Haseltine demonstrates how the successes of today were once the dream projects of visionary leaders who broke their ideas down and organized them into daily increments that allowed them to be approached methodically. Walt Disney, Haseltine points out, understood that "speaking to the heart works much better than speaking to the mind," because our conscious mind is "a Post-it note" compared to the unconscious, which he likens to the "Library of Congress." It's not what we do on a daily basis, he argues, but how we do it.

Introduction Why You Shouldn't Buy This Book xiii

1 The Ancient Script 1

2 The Brain's Playbook 22

3 Pursuing the Distant Win 41

4 Blinkers and Blind Spots 56

5 Turning Others' Failures into Your Successes 77

6 Secret Weapons 84

7 Bringing Big Bangs Back From the Future 114

8 The Language of the Heart 137

9 Light Long Fuses and Leave 158

10 In Defense of Tribalism 180

11 Lighting Fuses as a Way of Life 204

12 Keeping Long Fuses Lit 223

Endnotes 243