Wealth Creation

“Bart effectively illustrates that neither unprincipled opportunism nor endless regulation can lead to business success and societal well-being. Instead, such universal benefits can derive only from a relentless focus on creating real long-term value.”

“This book is for investors, but public policy makers take note. Its message for both is that wealth is created from within, not top down or outside in. For investors there are practical guidelines to identify firms early in their life cycle that demonstrate a high capacity for innovation and integrity, and that listen to and serve their customers. Policy makers must nurture this business environment for all to prosper.”

“We use the life-cycle framework explained in Bart Madden’s book as the linchpin for analyzing companies and diversifying clients’ portfolios. A lifecycle lens by which to better understand how business firms create wealth also leads to much-needed insights about the benefits to society from free-market capitalism. Such understanding is an essential pillar for preserving individual freedom and promoting progress. Before voting for leaders in Washington, we should quiz them on how well they understand the principles laid out in Wealth Creation.”

“An imaginative manuscript that integrates a dynamic approach to business systems with the fundamentals of wealth creation.”

“This enlightening book helps the reader understand what is needed to get a free-market economy to function ideally, and identifies significant shortcomings in current arrangements. Particularly illuminating is the emphasis on absence of incentives for management to focus on long-term performance of the firm, and failure of directors to provide effective oversight.”

—William J. Baumol, Academic Director, Berkley Center
for Entrepreneurial Studies, New York University; author
of The Free-Market Innovation Machine: Analyzing the
Growth Miracle of Capitalism

“Bart Madden has packed this work with nuggets of brilliant insight. In particular, his incisive critique of modern corporate governance and his urgent call for a new governance paradigm focused on long-term wealth creation strike at the heart of what ails corporate America. Unlike the typical business commentator, Madden doesn’t stop at describing the disease; he offers a provocative and powerfully compelling antidote in his prescription of board-led Shareholder Value Reviews. Madden’s talent for describing abstract valuation concepts with simple elegance makes this book at once enlightening to seasoned investment professionals, yet readily accessible to curious individual investors.”

“Beginning with the intriguing question of how we know what we think we know, Bart Madden builds an impressive framework in Wealth Creation for helping us understand how economic wealth is created over time. He accomplishes this by viewing our business landscape from a systems mindset that illustrates the benefits of competition focused on delivering the highest value to consumers. His competitive life-cycle model provides extraordinary insight into the successes and failures of companies. Among his solutions for boosting business productivity are lean management practices and improvements in corporate governance. In the end, Madden’s integrative work is a skillfully written book, full of interesting and often unexpected ideas for building wealth.”

“An important point in Wealth Creation is that knowledge growth and wealth creation are two sides of the same coin. Madden’s focus on a systems mindset shows the value of a firm’s culture geared to fast and effective thinking processes. As the many company examples demonstrate, the extent to which a firm’s employees join together for continual learning as to how best to serve customers and stakeholders ultimately determines how well shareholders do over the long term.”

“Just like any living organism, a firm too will die for sure, although when and under what conditions will be difficult to predict. Bart Madden’s book is a must read for those who are interested in making that prediction. Madden’s competitive life-cycle framework will provide interesting insights into the historical record of wealth creation of a firm, insights that will help forecast future life-cycle patterns of economic returns that the firm will generate for its investors. I recommend this book to every long term value investor.”

“Bart Madden begins his book by explaining how a PAK (Perceiving-Acting-Knowing ) Loop can help us to understand the fundamental process for building knowledge. This in turn leads to a systems view of the firm as an organization for building knowledge and creating wealth. His life-cycle valuation model orchestrates the handling of a firm’s financial results to reveal the interplay of competition and skill, while overcoming the shortcomings of earnings-per-share growth rates and PE multiples. Over many years, I have personally witnessed how the life-cycle valuation model has helped money managers and corporate executives deliver value-added performance that has led to substantial rewards for their clients and long-term shareholders.”

“Bartley J. Madden is not only a successful entrepreneur with a proven record of developing investment tools, but also a deep thinker intent on understanding the key principles for entrepreneurial success. In Wealth Creation, he shares his insights for a systems approach to creating and transforming knowledge into things people value. Madden recognizes that wealth is not a fixed pie, the distribution of which produces winners and losers. Rather it is something that is created—through ideas, knowledge, and action—providing benefits not only to the entrepreneur, but for consumers and employees as well.

The book brings together insights from a range of disciplines, from finance and accounting to behavioral economics and management efficiency, and will intrigue several different audiences, from budding entrepreneurs to investors, managers, and boards of directors wanting to fundamentally improve corporate governance. It should be required reading for government officials in order to help them meet their responsibilities to protect investors and consumers while not hampering innovation and economic growth. Madden presents compelling arguments that appropriate regulation—which provides for feedback and learning and respects the efficiencies that emerge when people are free to act to meet their needs—can help stave off future financial crises.”

—Susan E. Dudley, Director, George Washington University
Regulatory Studies Program, Research Professor, Trachtenberg
School of Public Policy and Public Administration, Former
Administrator, Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs,
Office of Management & Budget