Achieving Success Through Social Capital Tapping the Hidden Resources in Your Personal and Business Networks

A lead title in the new University of Michigan Business School of Management series, this book provides a hands-on guide to assessing, building, and leveraging every business person's greatest asset: their network of personal and professional contacts to achieve individual and organizational success.

Why do some people prosper while others struggle? The difference is more than what they know. It's also who they know. Successful people know how to improve their wealth, health, and happiness by creating rich social capital, tapping the hidden resources in their business, professional, and personal networks.

Achieving Success Through Social Capital is your hands-on guide to success through building and using your social capital. You'll learn why rich social capital produces higher pay, faster promotions, better jobs, breakthrough ideas, new business opportunities, and profitable companies. Rich social capital can even make you luckier. You'll also learn why good networks are essential for your health and emotional well-being, and for a meaningful life even a longer life.

With his 1994 business bestseller Networking Smart, Wayne Baker established himself as a leader in the social capital field. In this new book, he incorporates the latest findings about social capital into an empowering, practical, step-by-step program. He shows you how to move beyond the myth of individualism to the recognition that we are all connected and that connections are the keys to success. He guides you through the process of evaluating the quality of your current networks, improving your networks by applying dozens of proven practices, and using your social capital to invoke the power of reciprocity, helping yourself by contributing to others.

Baker has helped thousands of people, companies, and associations discover the power of social capital, take charge of their networks, and create the vibrant networks they need to support their missions and achieve their goals. His books, workshops, and business courses enable people to learn, apply, and benefit from the universal principles of networks.

Whether you're an entrepreneur with a growing business, a corporate executive trying to manage change, or a free agent in transitiondiscover the power of social capital. Learn to value connections, reinvent your networks, and create blockbuster results. This book will show you how.