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First edition of The Goal Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox North River Press First printing 1985 |
The Goal was written in collaboration with Eli Goldratt, an Israeli physicist turned business consultant. I was the creative writer; Goldratt was very much the thinker and the mind behind the concepts interwoven into the plot. This is a novel (with characters, setting, plot - all the elements of fiction) set mainly in an American manufacturing plant in the late 20th Century. Alex Rogo, the plant manager, is the narrator and main character, but the cast includes his wife and kids, his management staff, his boss and other superiors at the corporate level, even his mom. Through this story was laid out the basis of what soon came to be known as the Theory of Constraints, often referred to as TOC. On an intellectual level, The Goal deals with ideas such as system throughput, constraints, and the need to allow - or even create - local inefficiencies in order to a achieve an optimum, system efficiency. And yet, it’s a page-turner, with any number of readers saying they couldn’t put it down.
First published in 1985, The Goal was amazingly successful, and went on to become one of the bestselling business books of the 1980’s and 1990’s, selling millions of copies worldwide.
I wrote the original manuscript between 1983 and 1984. I was also involved in writing some additions for the first revised edition in 1986, but I have had no involvement since then. By 1987, I had met and was working with Bill Byham of Development Dimensions International on a short novel about empowerment that came to be called Zapp!
One last comment for book collectors: the above photo is the original 1985 cover of The Goal, and the copyright on that edition is 1984. Regardless of edition, there are currently only a handful of copies with the signatures of both authors. (As of 2009, I have signed no more than five that had been previously autographed by Eli Goldratt, and I think the exact number is more like three, out of the millions in print.) So if you have one, you’ve got a rare book - and one up on me; none of few copies I have left were signed by Eli. Now, what the commercial value might be someday is entirely speculative and not at all my area of expertise.