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How do we build organizations that are skilled enough, smart enough, and, most of all, enduring enough to maneuver through a treacherous competitive environment--without choking on the systems and procedures that create that strength? How do we ensure crisp execution and flawless performance--without suffocating the democratic spirit and individual creativity that are the heart of innovation? These are the questions that will occupy companies and managers through the end of the century, for they strike at the heart of business and life in the New Economy. They are also the central questions in the three books discussed in this issue's Books in Review section: Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization by Kevin Kelly, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, and Show-Stopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation of Microsoft by G. Pascal Zachary.

As CEO of the Swiss Corp. for Microelectronics and Watchmaking (SMH), Nicolas G. Hayek has engineered one of the world's most spectacular industrial comebacks - the revitalization of the Swiss watch industry. But SMH is more than a turnaround story. It is a case study of Hayek's management philosophy and strategic thinking, both of which are strikingly at odds with prevailing wisdom about how to compete in the new economy. For example, conventional wisdom suggests that "stateless" global companies should seek low-cost production wherever they can find it. Yet SMH is committed to its Swiss home base. Ultimately, Hayek's unconventional philosophy embraces corporate muscle and strategic imagination: "If you combine powerful technology with fantasy, you create something very distinct."

The takeover battles of the 1980s have given way to a battle over their meaning and legacy. On one side are critics who argue that the events of the 1980s are best understood as episodes in the greatest criminal conspiracy Wall Street has ever known. On the other side are advocates of the new finance for whom the decade represents a triumph of financial innovation.