If you're thinking about reading this book (which you should be) proceed with caution. What you read can and will change you, inspire you, while destroying many long-defined conventions in your head. From author Rashmi Bansal, comes a gem of a book about those who wanted to pursue something more interesting than taking orders from bosses to advertise soap, write code that no one cares about or improving Mr. Rich Old's return on investment by 1%.
The front cover header, "The inspiring stories of 25 Indian Inst. of Mgmt MBA graduates who chose to tread a path of their own making", is an accurate preview of the jaw-droppingly awe-inspiring entries of entrepreneurs who simply don't know what 'giving up' means. They started internet websites, investment banks, manufacturing powerhouses, non-profit organizations, and pioneering educational organizations among others.
So most of these people must've been born geniuses, right? Wrong. Granted, they possess intelligence that's above-average, but a majority of them come from simple backgrounds - middle-class parents who were in one of engineering, army, government and occasionally, in business.
They were just as prone to get addicted to smoking, teasing girls in school/college, to get confused about what they wanted in life, and overall terrified of taking the good ol' leap of faith: the 'red pill' of entrepreneurship. But in the end they believed in themselves and well, we have this wonderful book of true successes. There is no secret key to their success. But overall, it mainly came from the following factors:
- Passion - These entrepreneurs possessed a passion to achieve something beyond money and fame. They did it, because they wanted to. Often nothing mattered except enjoying the work they did. From passion, perseverance came naturally. The end goal just wasn't money, which helped make seeing one's way through failure that much easier. Success or failure were just nodes on an exciting roller-coaster ride. They dropped their salaried jobs, with the faith that a business based even on a semi-good idea would fetch the equivalent of an average 9-5 job's salary and much more within a couple of years of hard work.
- Opportunities - They saw, grabbed, massaged, and ingested opportunities. It sounds cliched, but reading the book gives the real perspective on this. These people just had the eagle-eyed vision to go after that new process that no one follows or that material no one has used. And even though, it wasn't profitable at first, it became the biggest source of revenue in certain cases. (Sintex, the biggest producer of plastic water tanks and other chemical products in India used to be a clothing company)
- Connections, connections, connections! An MBA definitely helps here. It's hard to get the high-level connections upon your own. For example, most people can only dream of interviewing the chief editor of a leading newspaper without pulling a lot of strings! Also, getting angel investors (family, friends, friends of friends, coworkers etc.) while starting out can only happen only through strong connections.
- Philanthropism - 4 out of the 25 entrepreneurs in the book just wanted to do good. Two of them studied amongst the poor, in backward schools and hated the unfairness of the money divide. Yes, these kind of entrepreneurs are rare, and the ones in the book hardly had any personal monetary success, but they created non-profit organizations that work towards improving the quality of lives all across India.
- Care - They genuinely cared about their employees. To the extent that those working for them became one with the cause and never abandoned ship. They made farmers rich by giving them company stake, pioneered employee stock options, made sure the work culture was very open, if not the same as a family. The senior most leaders made it all possible by often working the hardest, sometimes sacrificing personal and family lives for the company.
- Luck - Occasionally come aspects that are out of your control. Although they covered most aspects of their company, there were some times when they had to simply hope and pray for things to go their way. One simple example here is government approval for a near perfect business proposal.
All in all, this book is about the people who brought huge progress to India and the world in some cases. Whichever niche they chose, they brought immense novelty and change, while leaving a long-lasting legacy. They are not the ones who sat gossiping and cursing corruption in the Indian system. They did something about it.
They influenced everyday lives; most products or services we take for granted have reached us after a long and hard-fought battle. This only goes to show that there are many similar stories out there to be discovered. For me personally, the most inspiring part is that most of these people come from a simple, middle-class background. That they're not the rich sons or daughters of business tycoons who had it all from the beginning. It was simply their passion, hard-work, luck and belief that helped them succeed. Fiery Dreams indeed.
The preface and first chapter start out with general knowledge about project management, using historic examples such as pyramids, Boeing and the Parthenon. He shows how today's software projects could learn a few things from these stellar examples of engineering management. The main lessons here are to reuse past successes and to break down difficult problems into simple, but not necessarily easy, parts. 
Scott makes a fascinating point for anyone who thinks their desk job is difficult. He asks them to walk into the kitchen of their favorite busy restaurant or the ER of a hospital. These are also projects with people working together toward a common goal, but with a much crazier timeline and with lives on the line (well you could die of hunger).