The Brompton cover art

The Brompton

Engineering for Change

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About this listen

Lightweight, compact, distinctively styled, and now, electric: The Brompton isn't the only folding bicycle—or even the first. But everyone who has been on one will enthusiastically testify to its marvelous design (virtually unchanged over decades) and the particular joy of riding it.

Will Butler-Adams, CEO of Brompton Bicycles, has been at the company for twenty years. Initially, he worked as an engineer for Andrew Ritchie, the bike's brilliant inventor and the business's founder, before taking the helm in 2008. Butler-Adams's heartfelt mission is to grow and promote sustainable urban transportation and to improve city-dwellers' lives everywhere.

Under his leadership, Brompton has grown from making a few hundred bikes a year to over 90,000, with revenue of $130 million. But progress hasn't always been easy: There have been boardroom struggles, supply-chain problems, and conflicts with founder Andrew Ritchie. In The Brompton, Butler-Adams brings to life what it means to grow a company to global scale. He also tells the stories of the people who make the Brompton and the people who ride it. And he explains how customers all around the world fell in love with a brand that never set out to be a brand.

©2022 Will Butler-Adams and Dan Davies (P)2023 Tantor Business Cycling Engineering Professionals & Academics Heartfelt Management
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An excellent Audible listen and I’ve already bought a paper copy as well to lend to friends. Its approach took me by complete surprise. I didn’t know quite what I was about to listen but certainly didn’t expect to learn about engineering and its close links to business management, nor their constant, overlapping strive for perfection. Learning about that has easily justified the cost of the three Bromptons I’ve bought over the past 24 years. Not that the bikes hadn’t earned that themselves anyway with their excellent performance. Each model was significantly better than its predecessor.
My only criticism is that at times the recording seemed compromised earlier on in the reading. But, it happened seldom and the meaning was clear enough regardless.

An excellent Audible listen

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Very relevant to many founder / owner businesses. Will is a great guy and well worth listening to.

Very interesting

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