How to build a company where the best ideas win

Adam Grant, PhD, is the top-rated professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. While studying the differences between conformity and originality and how they can influence a company, Grant became interested in Bridgewater and contacted us. We invited him to learn about our culture and what makes us unique through interviews and by reviewing case studies and other tapes of Bridgewater meetings. After visiting, he wrote: "My time studying Bridgewater began to change me. I'd become more direct in giving critical feedback ... I'd come to believe that no one had the right to hold a critical opinion without speaking up about it." Grant describes Originals as being about "taking the road less traveled, championing a new set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better." The book was a critically-acclaimed #1 New York Times bestseller.

Robert Kegan, PhD, and Lisa Lahey, EdD, are professors at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, where they have also served as the co-director and associate director of the Change Leadership Group. In addition to their work on adult development, their recent research focuses on Deliberately Development Organizations (or DDOs), which they describe as "the most powerful settings in the world we have found for developing people’s capabilities." Kegan and Lahey approached Bridgewater about studying our culture, and we gave them access to live meetings, recorded meetings and dozens of employees at all levels to interview.

Edward Hess, LLM, is a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He is currently studying how to apply the science of learning in a business environment. His book provides guidance on turning an organization into a "High-Performance Learning Organization," which he describes as requiring "the right kinds of people, in the right learning environment, using the right learning processes, to continually learn faster and better than the competition." Hess also visited Bridgewater, observed meetings, and interviewed employees.