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Summary: This book gave my life new meaning
Review: I thought I was an outcast, a weirdo, the odd person who didn't fit in. I never did well with the "career path" of building a resume of employement with large corporations.
Pink gave us the term "Free Agent Nation" and over the last few years, I've used it often to describe the more alive, happy, and productive people I work with who would think that turning your life over to a company is an insane way to live.
Thank you Dan Pink. I may still be an oddball, but I've learned there are millions of people like me.
Rating: 
Summary: Not much more than cheerleading.
Review: Ok¡K.I am not a part of FAN (Free Agent Nation) ¡Kbut as someone who is interested in striking out on my own, this book did not offer much beyond cheerleading. What was said could have been told in far fewer pages. I expected more than just anecdotal research and feel good stories. At the end of every chapter is ¡§The Box¡¨ in which the author includes a summary ¡§The Crux¡¨, a paragraph called ¡§The Factoid, ¡§The Quote¡¨ and lastly ¡§The Word¡¨ which is just a way to get me to recall buzzwords and phrases I¡¦d rather forget, such as Thanksgiving Turkey Model, Free Agent Infrastructure, HOHO, FAN Bonds as well as others. Many of the footnotes were based off newspapers and magazines, or sources listed in the text appear to be secondhand, or credit was somewhat misleading in the text. For example in Chapter 2 the author gives credit to ¡§Wells Fargo (Bank) study ¡K.¡¨ to give it more credibility but when you look in the footnotes it give the lead credit is given to the an advocacy organization the National Federation of Independent Business along with Wells Fargo. In reviewing their website the research is on NFIB¡¦s letterhead with Wells Fargo also supporting the publications. In his chapter, ¡§The New Time Clock¡¨ on page 105, the author lists studies by the Families and Work Institute and another by a NYU economist and a University of Pennsylvania colleague, but upon further review in the footnotes he lists the sources as a Los Angeles Times article and another in Business Week. The impression is given that he did not read or analyze the original research. Without defining what a Free Agent is beyond an individual, temp, micro-business it was easy to make a leap and estimate 33 million free agents. If I am a stay at home spouse who sells a few things on eBay, or have a couple of garage sales every year; am I part of Free Agent Nation. I see many hardworking, entrepreneurial, networked free agents everyday, but not at Starbucks or Kinko¡¦s. Each morning as I pass the Home Depot near my house I see many free agents; not many have cell phones, buy high priced coffee, speak English, or have a car. It appears the huge market of what we call ¡§day laborers¡¨ here in California was not included in the author¡¦s FAN census or demographic statistics. There were few good tips or ideas in the book about health insurance, taxes, and education but the opening dialog in Chapter 17, Putting the ¡¥I¡¦ in IPO: The Path Toward Free Agent Finance¡¨ was a bit laughable. The chapter begins with two different dialogs for a FAN business owner seeking a $50,000 loan from his local ¡§traditional¡¨ bank and another dialogue were the same business owner goes to a financial federation for Free Agent Electricians. Whereas the traditional bank turns him down the Federation of Free Agent Electricians proposes to float him a $50,000 bond. Although this is a fictional account the author does describe why it is impossible today due to regulatory restrictions, the credit risk involved in floating an unsecured bond, or the fixed and marketing costs of floating the bond. While Michael Milken did lend money to the ¡§shaky, or the sagging¡¨ as far as I know he only floated public traded bonds to public traded companies. As the back cover endorsement by Tom Peters states ¡§Twenty ¡Vfive years from now we¡¦ll still be discussing this book¡¨, I only wish there was a better book out there to discuss. This book is one reason why I read few business books these days; rah, rah.
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Summary: FAN is talking about me ... and us
Review: I've worked as an employee for ten years (5 government, 5 corporate) and have had my own microbusiness for the last seventeen. This book tells it like it is. Now I know why I'm so addicted to personal technology - these are the modern-day equivalents of the tools of production that Marx wrote about. These are the tools of liberation. I'm an amateur futurist keeping up with big-picture books on social trends since starting with Alvin Toffler's Future Shock in the late sixties to The Third Wave, Free Agent Nation and the Cluetrain Manifesto and many books in between. FAN is a very good book. As a microbusiness owner, it helps me understand myself and my situation better. It gives me LOTS of ideas and inspiration to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves in this time of transition and economic challenge. I started my business 17 years ago after reading a great book called Maverick Career-styles: The Way of the Ronin. The writing was on the wall even then - in the mid-eighties. I was willing to take a chance and strike out on my own after ten years of traditional employment because that book gave me a way of seeing that I might be more secure as a wiley and agile independent professional than I would be as a corporate drone in this new world we are living in. Dan Pink speaks my language! Well-written, entertaining and valuable read.
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Summary: I just got this, and am looking forward to reading, but
Review: Daniel Pink was doing quite well as publicist and speechwriter. He'd landed a job on the staff of the Vice President of the United States, in fact. Then he had one of those "Moments of Truth we've heard about. The Moment of Truth came when the pressure of politics and long days caught up with him. He had a fainting spell. He very nearly puked on the Vice President. And he decided that maybe there was a better way to live his life. Daniel quit the organizational life to work as a freelance writer. He got work right away. Having the White House on your resume usually helps with things like that. He worked out of his home and pretty soon he noticed that lots of friends and neighbors were starting to do the same thing. "Aha!" he thought, "this could be a trend and I could write a book about it." And so Daniel set off on a year-long jaunt around the country. He interviewed lots of folks. He researched the statistics on independent workers in the US. And he wrote his book. The book is a mixed bag. On the upside, Pink has done a good job of pulling together a lot of different sources. He's interviewed a lot of people and he's the kind of writer who can make the results of those interviews sing. Those individual portraits are the strength of this book. Would that he handled the statistics as well. In the early part of the book, Pink sets his work up as a sequel to William H. Whyte's Organization Man, one written for our times. The rigor of Pink's research and his use of statistics suffer from the comparison. There's a certain amount of Statistical Voodoo here. In the quest to figure out just how many free agents there are we're presented with lots of different estimates from several different sources. Numbers are adjusted up, down and sideways. In the end, Pink tells us that there are about 33 million free agents in the US. He divides those free agents into three groups. There are soloists. He's one of those. There are microbusinesses. Those have three or four employees. And there are temps. About 3 million of the 33 million are temporary workers. That's one weakness of this book. Including temps, who have different problems, prospects and possibilities takes attention away from the other free agents that Pink gushes about. Did I say "Gushes?" Yep. Sure did. Pink thinks that being a free agent is just the neatest thing in all the world and he obviously wants you to think so, too. For Pink free agency is the wave of the future, a New Agey kind of approach to work where everyone (except temps) wins almost all the time. Nonsense. I've been one of those free agents for a long time now. Many of my friends qualify, too. We make a wonderful living at it, but we've all seen enough folks start out on the free agent journey to know that lots of them end up as road kill. To succeed as a free agent takes talent and discipline. It takes a willingness to be totally responsible for your results that not everyone is willing to shoulder. It's, very simply, not for everyone. You won't hear much of this from Pink, though. He doesn't seem to talk to many folks who've tried and failed. And he hasn't been at it long enough himself to remember the legions of folks who call and write and email because they "want to do what you do" and then dwindle down to a precious few who are still at in years later. Granted, Pink was writing while the dot-com, new economy bubble was still round and full, but that doesn't explain why he simply leaves out mention of data (decline in business startups, for example) that don't support his conclusions or people (Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, for example) who don't agree with his assessments. I found that I loved the stories and interviews, but that I was increasingly put off by the analysis. Every time Pink moves to analyze what he found the language changes to something like a revival tent or a commercial break. That may be designed to make his concepts easy to remember, but it just made me tired and crabby. Read this book for well-written stories about people who are charting their own course as free agents. But skip the analysis until the next time you're in the mood for a theological argument.
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Summary: Free Agents Are Changing Economic Reality
Review: In Baltimore, 700 low-income people have completed a 108- hour course in how to start a small business. The course is offered by a non-profit, Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore. WEB says that 80% of those who started the program have begun their own enterprise, and that after 10 years, 80% of those are still in business. These new business owners are part of a national trend affecting rich and poor alike. They are "free agents", the people who will eventually change all we think we know about work life.
According to the latest census figures, more than half of American companies have less than five employees, and 70% of all businesses in the United States have NO paid employees. Today the 33 million free agents in the US outnumber manufacturing employees and all federal, state, local and county government employees, including teachers and police officers.
These little companies typically re-circulate 60% of revenues into their local economies through wages, using local vendors, and consuming local products and services. In contrast, chain stores only re-circulate 20% locally and warehouse type stores only 6% locally.
Author Daniel Pink calls this growth of the productively unattached "Free Agent Nation", and it may signal a new capitalism that will go far beyond "getting a good job", and "the organization man".
In his essential book Free Agent Nation: How America's New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live (Warner Business Books, 2001), Pink notes that the growth of free agents are enabled by four economic trends. The old social contract in which a company traded lifetime job security for employee loyalty no longer exists. Second, new inexpensive and portable technology means that anyone can buy a computer and own the means of production, no longer being dependent on a corporation to provide what's needed to make a business work. Third, long term prosperity has enabled people to search for meaning in their work, not just a paycheck. Fourth, corporations continue to form and dissolve at faster rates, so most workers will outlive their companies.
The new social contract is more challenging than the old. Pink describes it: "The free agent provides talent (products, services, advice) in exchange for opportunity (money, learning, connections)." Many large corporations now outsource as much as possible to free agents, a good deal on both sides.
Free agents are growing in spite of outdated employment, tax, and zoning laws that restrict small businesses. Free agents pay more taxes than employees because they are both employers and employees, they pay more for health insurance because of laws encouraging corporations to provide coverage, and they find themselves breaking outmoded zoning laws to run home businesses. But while the political landscape doesn't yet support their freedom, they have already changed the cultural and economic landscape. Free agents put up with the downside for freedom and because they actually earn more than their employed counterparts for doing the same work. A recent study of one thousand new millionaires found that two thirds were self-employed.
In many ways, being a free agent is the ultimate step in personal responsibility, ethics and self-actualization. The free agent definition of success is entirely personal and may have little to do with income or prestige. Free agents survive through positive relations with others. If a free agent acts in an unethical manner nothing will soften the landing. Whether they make it or not, there is no one to pity them, and no one else to blame.
Rating: 
Summary: Spend Time Elsewhere
Review: Not a bad book if you have exhausted your list of other business and self-help literature. This book could easily have been reduced by a hundred pages and still made the point that the corporate world of the fifties has been transformed into the free agent world of the 21st century. When Pink focuses on a specific issue the quality of his analysis and the value of the book rises. However, like so many business books of the day it fails to create sustained value and interest. Off to the used rack. (Are there any editors left in the publishing world?)
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Summary: This Book changed my life!!
Review: And I never thought I would say that about any book other than the Bible. But Pink's book has become my professional Bible. I wasn't one of those wise ones who sat down, thought it all out, weighed all the plusses and minuses, and made a decision. Nope, not me. That makes way too much sense! After being left stranded high and dry after the Technology industry downturn last year, and scrambling to make it; little by little, one job here, one job there, I finally realized I was making it, and pretty well, but without the traditional J-O-B. Then I ran across Dan's book, and found myself!! It is overflowing with advice, insights, perspective, tips, you-name-it for those who love freedom and controlling their own life more than a corner office with a rubber tree plant! If you want to understand the current revolution in the workplace, read this book. If you think you might be interested in being a Free Agent, study this book! If you're trying to make it as a Free Agent, DEVOUR this book. Thanks for all your hard work, Dan! I can never thank you enough!!!
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Summary: The Key to the New Economy
Review: Daniel Pink has provided us with a glimpse of what could be as we make our way through this revolution in our economy. In his book, the author challenges the traditional definitons of work, success, and loyalty. As an free agent myself, I know Pink is on target and I recommend this book to anyone considering this lifestyle. Pink spent a year traveling the country, interviewing people from all walks of life who no longer depend on a company to take care of them. We benefit from hearing their stories and from Pink's own insights such as "Working hard for a far off reward is often a valuable exercise, but the act of work itself should produce it's own intrinsic rewards. And since no position is permanent . . .you might as well enjoy what you do." He encourages us to take responsibility for our life and work and in his new edition he even shares strategies on how to do just that.
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