The Smartest Little Company in America

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Will the future of Highsmith Inc. be guided by this confluence of scanning, serendipity, and synthesis? Perhaps. But Duncan Highsmith's overarching goal is actually more immediate: he wants all the employees in the company to shed their tactical blinders and begin thinking strategically--about customers, about the industry, and about forces for which the words big picture seem inadequate. "Life, the Universe, and Everything is in many ways in its infancy," says Highsmith. "The concrete benefits still have more to do with my role than with the rest of the organization. But thinking about what's next is becoming part of the routine work of the organization."

Even if Highsmith succeeds in transforming his employees into astute analysts of external information, the company will still need its cadre of powerful librarians. More than ever. "The thing about information is that it never stops coming, and it's always coming in new ways and new formats," says Guedea CarreÑo. "It's impossible to keep on top of it and still get the phones answered, the orders picked and packed, and the catalogs designed. We're here to help people integrate information into their jobs as seamlessly as possible. That way, they can keep doing their jobs."

Leigh Buchanan is a senior editor at Inc.

Think like a librarian

The Web: Getting untangled
Lisa Guedea CarreÑo admits that she couldn't do her job without the Internet. But that doesn't mean that the corporate librarian at Highsmith Inc. believes cyberspace lives up to its hype as a source of information. "It's a pretty unpredictable, unsophisticated tool," she says.

To counteract that, Guedea CarreÑo has devised a list of road rules for evaluating Web sites. Among the questions she suggests users ask themselves: What's the purpose of the site you're looking at? Who is the author, owner, or sponsor? Are the links on the site relevant, reliable, and current? If there are biases, are they acknowledged? What is the scope of the information? Can you tell when it was last updated? If the answers aren't satisfactory, Guedea CarreÑo suggests seeking verification elsewhere.

Pay attention to typos, she also advises, because such errors point to a lack of quality control. "These seem like small things," says Guedea CarreÑo, "but they all add up to whether the information as a whole is reliable."

Books: Rules of thumbing
At Highsmith, assistant corporate librarian Genevieve Mecherly culls through books like an apple picker, separating the good from the wormy. Armed only with a title, Mecherly says, she can rapidly decide whether a publication deserves a home on Highsmith's shelves. She rattles off her judgments: " Data Mining Solutions: Methods and Tools for Solving Real-World Problems. Yes. A thing that says real-world or tools will get my attention because, hopefully, it's practical. The Prentice Hall Directory of Online Education Resources. No. Any directory of on-line sources is out of date once it's printed. The Power of Nice: How to Negotiate So Everyone Wins--Especially You! No. Anything with an exclamation point has one strike against it--a little too 'pop,' too cute."

Some of Mecherly's rules of thumbing: The word encyclopedia in the title is a good sign, and words like directory, dictionary, and--best of all-- concise dictionary are also good indicators of a book's worth. Books with applications for both employees and customers, such as Tomorrow's Office: Creating Effective and Humane Interiors, elicit huzzahs. (Highsmith's product line includes office furniture.) On the other hand, words like all and key are suspicious. ("Whose idea of key?" asks Mecherly.) As for inspiring, "it can sometimes mean 'not practical," she says.

Indexes: Funds of information
"I have this thing about indexes," admits librarian Lisa Guedea CarreÑo. "If a book is well indexed, then that tells me something about the quality of its publishing. If it doesn't have an index, then I start thinking, 'OK, who slapped this together?"

The index is generally Guedea CarreÑo's first stop in a business book because it allows her to target her reading with pinpoint precision. (Why read--or even browse--the whole thing when the relevant subject crops up only on pages 62 through 67?) Scanning the table of contents is another way to tell if a book is organized logically. And the bibliography--who's there, who's not--tips her off about credibility. "Basically, I like metadata--information about information," she says. "It means that something has been thought through and framed and analyzed."

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Leigh Buchanan

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books."

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