A bigger prize: why competition isn't everything and how we do better Heffernan, Margaret

Table of contents:

Part one: Personal Best

1. Oh, Brother
2. Making the Grade
3. The Morning After
4. Angry Birds
5. Keeping Score

Part two: The Case of the Purdue Chickens

6. Only the Impresarios Thrive

Part three: The Business of Winning

7. Clone Wars
8. Supersize Everything
9. How Low Can We Go?
10. Top of the World
11. A Bigger Prize

The Olympics. X-Factor. The Rich List. The Nobel Prize. Everywhere you look: competition - for fame, money, attention, status. Being top seems to be everything - but what is it costing all of us? We depend on competition and expect it to identify the best, make complicated decisions easy and to motivate the lazy and inspire the dreamers. But, as Margaret Heffernan shows in this eye-opening look at competition, competition regularly produces just what we don't want: rising levels of fraud, cheating, stress, inequality and political stalemate. Siblings won't speak to each other. Children burn out at school. Doping proliferates among athletes. Auditors and fund managers go to jail for insider trading. Winners seem to take all while the desire to win consumes all, inciting panic and despair. We now know that competition often doesn't work, that the best do not always rise to the top and the so-called efficiency of competition creates a great deal of waste. So what are our alternatives? What are the skills needed for creative collaboration and how do we hone them? Talking to scientists, musicians, athletes, entrepreneurs and executives, in the follow-up to her bestselling Wilful Blindness, Margaret Heffernan has discovered that, around the world, individuals and organizations are finding creative, cooperative ways to work that don't pit people against each other but support them in their desire to work together.

(http://www.simonandschuster.com/search/books/_/N-/Ntt-a+bigger+prize)