FORMULATING SOLUTIONS

Bening chronicles his considerable success in this business memoir.

Armed with a degree in chemistry from St. Lawrence University, the author began working for MonoSol, a chemical product manufacturer, in 1989, in marketing and sales. By 2001, he was the company’s CEO and part-owner, and he stewarded it from $4 million in annual sales to a projected half billion by 2021. Over the course of his 33 years at the helm, Bening experienced the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial life and formulated a coherent and impressively undogmatic business philosophy. Many of the lessons the author imparts are nearly obligatory staples of the business-book field—he encourages the reader to build “trust-based relationships,” to push innovation, establish a healthy business culture, and resist the encroachments of excessive bureaucratic complexity. Moreover, he is not immune to the allure of the genre’s hoariest cliches: “Don’t get stuck in your comfort zone, focused only on the familiar.” Nevertheless, Bening departs from the hackneyed by exercising quite a bit of admirable circumspection—one of the reasons he gives for taking relationships seriously is that “However brilliant we are, we all operate from a limited perspective.” Also, he goes beyond the mindless cheerleading of perpetual disruption by acknowledging the profound unpredictability of innovation, and the need to cautiously subject it to “professionalizing.” Most of the book is devoted to a granular history of MonoSol and its remarkable ascendancy rather than the espousal of platitudes. The section on a “strong network of IP measures” is particularly edifying, uncommon for a book of this kind, and relevant to the technology industry. Overall, this amalgam of memoir and business handbook avoids many of the chief vices of similar titles, and should be a valuable resource, especially for entrepreneurs working in technology.

A thoughtful recollection of an admirably accomplished career.