Pull:  Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin
Pamela Walker Laird
Harvard Studies in Business History
Harvard University Press

“Even the most extraordinary people have never achieved ordinary success alone.”

            Redefining the way we view business success, Pull demolishes the popular American self-made story by exposing the social dynamics that navigate some people toward opportunity and steer others away. Who gets invited into the networks of business opportunity? What does an unacceptable candidate lack? The answer is social capital—all those social assets that attract respect, generate confidence, evoke affection, and invite loyalty.
            In retelling success stories from Benjamin Franklin to Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates, Pull goes beyond personality, upbringing, and social skills to reveal the critical common key--access to circles that control and distribute opportunity and information. The book explains how civil rights activism and feminism in the 1960s and 1970s helped demonstrate that personnel practices violated principles of equal opportunity. Pull evaluates what social privilege actually contributes to business success, and analyzes the balance between individual characteristics—effort, innovation, talent—and social factors such as race, gender, class, and connections.
            In contrasting how Americans have prospered—or not—with how we have talked about prospering, Pull offers rich insights into how business really operates and where its workings fit within American culture. From new perspectives on entrepreneurial achievement to the role of affirmative action and the operation of modern corporate personnel systems, Pull shows that business is a profoundly social process, and that no one can succeed alone.