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Eli Broad
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The Art of Being Unreasonable Lib/E: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking Audio CD – CD, June 11, 2012

by Eli Broad (Author, Reader), Walter Dixon (Reader)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 168 ratings
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Unorthodox success principles from a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Eli Broad's embrace of unreasonable thinking has helped him build two Fortune 500 companies, amass personal billions, and use his wealth to create a new approach to philanthropy. He has helped to fund scientific research institutes, K-12 education reform, and some of the world's greatest contemporary art museums. By contrast, reasonable people come up with all the reasons something new and different can't be done, because, after all, no one else has done it that way. This book shares the unreasonable principles--from negotiating to risk-taking, from investing to hiring--that have made Eli Broad such a success. - Broad helped to create the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Broad, a new museum being built in downtown Los Angeles - His investing approach to philanthropy has led to the creation of scientific and medical research centers in the fields of genomic medicine and stem cell research - At his alma mater, Michigan State University, he endowed a full-time M.B.A. program, and he and his wife have funded a new contemporary art museum on campus to serve the broader region - Eli Broad is the founder of two Fortune 500 companies: KB Home and SunAmerica If you're stuck doing what reasonable people do--and not getting anywhere--let Eli Broad show you how to be unreasonable, and see how far your next endeavor can go.
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  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    Gildan Media Corporation
  3. Publication date
    June 11, 2012
  4. ISBN-13
    979-8200636044
  5. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08Z9VZSFQ
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gildan Media Corporation; Unabridged edition (June 11, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8200636044
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.3 ounces
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 168 ratings

About the author

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Eli Broad

Eli Broad

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Eli Broad is a renowned business leader who built two Fortune 500 companies in two different industries from the ground up over a five-decade career in business. He is the founder of both SunAmerica Inc. and KB Home (formerly Kaufman and Broad Home Corporation).

Today, Eli Broad and his wife, Edythe, are devoted to philanthropy as founders of The Broad Foundations, which they established to advance entrepreneurship for the public good in education, science and the arts. The Broad Foundations, which include The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Broad Art Foundation, have assets of $2.4 billion.

His first book, "The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking," was published by Wiley in April 2012.

The Broads reside in Los Angeles and have two sons.

Learn more: www.broadfoundation.org

Like Eli Broad on Facebook: www.facebook.com/elibroad

Follow Eli Broad on Twitter: @unreasonableeli

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
168 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Karen Elliot
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read
Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2023
Verified Purchase
My husband wanted this book. I had already listened to it. It’s a very interesting read. Highly recommend this!
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Wally Bock
4.0 out of 5 stars A book chock-full of practical advice from someone who has been dramatically successful
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2019
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I bought The Art of Being Unreasonable soon after it came out in 2012. I wanted to learn from the only person who has created two Fortune 500 companies in different industries. I read the book and liked it. Since that first reading, I’ve dipped back into the book several times to read an individual chapter or two. In other words, for me, this is a book that has legs.

Eli Broad is well-known for his philanthropy, for creating both KB Homes and SunAmerica, and for being unreasonable. I wanted to learn what I could about this unreasonable stuff. In chapter one, Broad tells you why he wrote the book. 

“In this book, I want to show you how applying unreasonable thinking can help you achieve goals others may tell you are out of reach, just as it has for me.”

If that was it, this wouldn’t be a helpful book. You can be wildly unreasonable and successful if you’re lucky. You can also be wildly unreasonable and unsuccessful. The key to Broad’s success is more than being unreasonable. Here’s another quote from chapter one. 

“Research – and using what you learn from it to analyze every situation – is what separates being unreasonable from being irrational.”

There are 22 chapters in The Art of Being Unreasonable. The first time I read the book, I enjoyed them all. But over the years, there are only a few that I’ve gone back to again and again. Here are some of them. 

Chapter two is “Why Not? The Powerful Question.” Broad thinks that it’s the first step to success and it seems that way to me. Sometimes, I need to be reminded. 

Chapter four is “Do Your Homework No Matter How Much Time It Takes.” This may be the most important chapter in the book because it’s what makes unreasonable work. Broad advises you to pay attention to history and watch out for creeping complacency. He also suggests that you can’t do it all yourself. You need to ask questions and delegate.

There are plenty of other good things in the book. There’s a lot about negotiation, and motivating people, and the best way to assess risk. I love all those things, but they’re not where the big value is for me. The only other chapter I’ve returned to several times is chapter 21: “The Unreasonableness of Art and Artists.” Whether or not you are a collector and philanthropist, like Broad, there’s a lot in this chapter to get you thinking.  

By now, you may be asking yourself, “If this is such a great book, why didn’t you review it years ago?” The answer to that one is, “I don’t know.” Probably something else claimed my attention and I went off in another direction. 

In A Nutshell

The Art of Being Unreasonable is a book chock-full of practical advice from someone who has been dramatically successful. It’s a book you’ll read through and return to several times.
4 people found this helpful
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The CEO Coach
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent if you have the right mindset...
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2012
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I have read a number of reviews on this book and have a different viewpoint on the content.

As a CEO Coach, one of my clients worked for Eli Broad. I remember the stories of how tough he was yet they were mere anecdotes to me. Reading his account of his life, he was a no nonsense kind of leader, tough but fair. I love the story about where he asked a charge, "Is this the best you can do?" Many CEOs can learn from his attitude and demeanor. Was he the "perfect" leader. No, but who is? Could he have spent more time with his family? Yes. He made choices, some of which he regretted, many that he did not.

Another great leader (in my opinion) is Balaji Krishnamurthy, who has a test for leadership. Simply:

Leadership = Leverage + Legacy

A leader causes someone to act differently than they would have on their own... i.e. the "extra". Leverage causes thinking, acting and behaving in many people. Great leaders have high leverage. Legacy is over how much time. Great leaders affect many people over a long time.

Mr. Broad has done both, professionally AND personally. Indulge the differences in the ratings. Eli deserves every star as he demonstrated to others how to be a great leader.
5 people found this helpful
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gary
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2023
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Great book with practical business applications. Reviews a story of a sucessful business man.
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investingbythebooks
3.0 out of 5 stars "Forget Conventional Wisdom"
Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2014
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Here's the scenario: Exactly one decade into a successful, industry-transforming journey as a housebuilder of the future - in the booming housing market of the U.S. in the 1960s - the company suddenly decides to acquire a sleepy, family-owned life insurer, using up a considerable chunk of the balance sheet. Motive? To diversify ahead of a "looming housing market correction". All in favour of buying/holding onto the stock, please raise your hand! Well, you should have. The housebuilder was KB Homes and the life insurer was SunLife. The transaction was made with impeccable timing by the founder Eli Broad, leading to a 25 per cent share price CAGR over 37 years, handily beating Berkshire Hathaway over the time period. In 1998 the renamed SunAmerica was acquired by AIG for $18bn, whereas KB Homes is still traded, slowly recouping from the latest housing correction. The Art of Being Unreasonable is the leadership and life lessons of Eli Broad, the only entrepreneur to have founded two Fortune 500 companies in two different sectors. As accomplished as that is, it could have been even better - more on that later.

Whereas the perfect 20/20 vision of hindsight, delivered in a brilliant to-the-point format of a book, might make the answer to the question seem obvious (of course I would have backed him, he was a genius!), the here and now is always infinitely more difficult. And that's the beauty of the success of The Outsiders, William Thorndike's masterpiece; waved around today as a blueprint for capital allocation prowess and corporate stewardship, at different points in time all eight CEOs portrayed in the book have been considered to be utterly insane, with share-prices lingering at Graham-type valuations. KB Homes and Eli Broad, while not one of the eight Outsiders, were no exception. Unconventionality is not offered up alongside low volatility and steadily quarterly progress!

The structure of the book is loosely aligned with Mr. Broad's reasons for success occupying the first half of the book, with chapters such as "Forget Conventional Wisdom" and "The Value of Being Second". They are all well researched, applicable and wonderfully prosed. I enjoyed this part of the book as much as Morton Mandel's It's All About Who and Jack Welch's Straight From The Gut. The latter half of the book takes it into more detail and also mixes business lessons with Broad's considerable accomplishments in philanthropy and art collection. This is where the plot gets a little thin in my opinion, at least for the business-minded reader. But, the book-title conveys more than a figurative reference to "art"; it is actually covered almost with the same detail and gusto as his other three "careers". Although neatly interwoven with business and life, it is a subject matter somewhat narrower in scope to copy-and-learn from. As a reader, you can choose to breeze through these pages. But dinner would be a poorer meal without enjoying dessert.

Getting back to the "it could have been even better"-comment. Hidden in a paragraph towards the end, Mr. Broad talks about an investment KB Homes made in 1966, founding Nation Wide Cablevision, one of the earliest entrants into this field. Receiving a bid for the business in 1972 from TCI, KB Homes - strapped for cash from heavy investing into home building, cable and insurance - decided to sell. After bemoaning the fact that the $23mn could have been worth much more today, merely from holding onto TCI stock, but perhaps even more so by consolidating the industry themselves, Mr. Broad merely drops the subject. As an avid student of business leaders and entrepreneurship, I wished he spent more pages on how capital allocations were made, the importance (or not) of a "corporate DNA" and how this experience affected the AIG takeover of SunAmerica. Inasmuch as I enjoyed a full-length book on his career and massive accomplishments (the CV runs 11 pages), the spirit Mr Broad shares with the other Outsiders would have made for fascinating reading under Thorndike's tutelage.

This is a review by investingbythebooks.com
8 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Fairo
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 18, 2016
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Bought as a gift for a dear friend.
He loves it. Thank you.
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M. Wilhelm
3.0 out of 5 stars Never judge a book by it's cover!
Reviewed in Germany on December 16, 2012
Verified Purchase
Quote from the jacket text: "The book explains how to ask unreasonable questions, pursue the untried, relentlessly revise expectations upward, be restless, and most important, seek out the best in everything - the best value, the best investments, the best people - and the best in yourself."

The book is a sequence of anecdotes of the life of Eli Broad. It reads like a biography but it is not. No doubt, Eli Broad has a very impressive vita as a business man and philanthropist. But the book does not deliver what it promises. A little bit more of structure and background information and it would have been a great biography.

I was very disappointed when I had finished the book because the book does NOT explain what is promised in the jacket text!

PS: The wikipedia entry of Eli Broad does summarize most of the content in a very efficient way.
3 people found this helpful
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Dr. M. D. Morris
4.0 out of 5 stars The Art of being Unreasonable
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2012
Verified Purchase
Eli Broad's book is prefaced by Michael R Bloomberg.
One should be very careful about asking someone who is such a good self promoter and with such creativity to kick off one's own offering. I shall have to read it again in order to get into it.
This really is the story about a formerly despised group of immigrants whose ingenuity and creativity exploded in America. One should never surpress or criticise those who behave in a confident but unconventional way. I recall (in my second job as an English doctor) trying to persuade a young artist on my ward- simply a ward orderly at the time, not to take up art because no one managed to make a living out of it (it was 1958). He became the 'golden boy' of British Art. His name was David Hockney.
Such people are 'thin on the ground' so we might as well read what they have to say. (and possibly,- as they say in Yorkshire) 'keep out traps shut!'
David Morris
One person found this helpful
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Bob B
5.0 out of 5 stars I'll tell you what is unreasonable ......
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2012
Verified Purchase
..... doing all you can to avoid paying corporation tax in the UK

Until things change significantly at Amazon.co.uk this will be my last purchase here ............
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Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid! Much Better Billionaires Stories Out There And For Much Less!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 21, 2012
Verified Purchase
Was looking forward to this though did hesitate because of the over inflated Kindle price, but after reading the sample, bought it. Wished I hadn't!

Have read many billionaire and millionaire biogs and this is so poor. Eli definetly didn't make his billions from being an author.
It's just a mish-mash which seems to jump all over the place and doesn't hold you like other biogs.

Seth Godin's review on Amazon.com sums it up best, with his review and his 1 star rating! http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Being-Unreasonable-Unconventional/product-reviews/111817321X/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0

5 Stars for Amazon for being able to get a refund!!!
One person found this helpful
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