The Outsiders (Will Thorndike)
At a Glance
Read it on the far side of the close. It answers what to do with the cash a business makes, which is the question waiting once the search is over.
- Pricing
- One-Time, $32.00 from the publisher (store.hbr.org, read August 2026), whose own page also tells a buyer to see the retailer for the price; sold in every format at standard retail. Published October 23, 2012.
- Best For
- The buyer who has closed, or is about to, and now has to decide what the business does with the cash it throws off. It is not a how-to for buying and it teaches neither search nor diligence.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- The clearest statement of the decision an owner makes over and over after the close, which is where the cash goes
- Argues from one measure it names up front, the long-run return per share, so a reader can check the case instead of admiring it
- Eight self-contained chapters, so it works read one CEO at a time during a search
Cons
- Every company in it is a public one far larger than anything a searcher buys, so the mechanics do not transfer and only the thinking does
- Published in October 2012 and unrevised, so nothing in it touches how a small acquisition is financed or priced today
What Searchers Say
A standing fixture on entrepreneurship-through-acquisition reading lists, and the publisher's own page prints endorsements from Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and Michael Dell. The gap a reader here has to bridge is scale: every subject ran a public company.