Michael Finley claims kinship with the tradition of globally curious writers like H.G. Wells, Colin Wilson, and Isaac Asimov. Not that he is as great as them — but because, like them, he researches and writes about whatever fascinates him.
Mike is a columnist by blood. He broke in writing "Deep Thinking" 30 years ago for the Minneapolis newspaper Many Corners. In the 1990s he wrote the weekly column "Future Shoes" for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. For over a dozen years he has authored the popular "Diversions" column for Computer User Online. He has just started writing a monthly column for Amazon. Michael may be best known in the past year for his weekly Internet-based weblog "vagaries and vicissitudes," his personal journal about life on the knife's edge of change.
Mike writes books, from his award-winning business collaborations with Harvey Robbins — Transcompetition (McGraw-Hill), The New Why Teams Don't Work, and Why Change Doesn't Work — to his book Techno-Crazed, charting the dubious progress of computer technology.
Mike's journalism and commentary have appeared in over 700 publications. His website, Michael Finley's Future Shoes is a favorite site for red-eyed Web surfers. Because Mike was a pioneer of the World Wide Web, his site appears early on many search engine requests. The site has polled over 1 million page-views since it first went up in 1995.
Mike enjoys the distinction of being named one of a handful of "Masters of the Wired World" in 1998 by Financial Times Press. Other nominees include Arthur C. Clarke, Nicholas Negroponte, Alvin Toffler, Charles Handy, Al Gore, Tony Blair, and Jim Barksdale. The entire group was honored in a book by Financial Times Press, Masters of the Wired World, published in 1999. In 2000, Intel Corp. named him one of "25 Weird [sic] Thinkers of the Millennium."
Awards? Mike's book with Harvey Robbins, The New Why Teams Don't Work, won the Booz-Allen & Hamilton Global Business Book Award for "Best Management Book, 1995, The Americas." He won a Pushcart Prize for writing in 1985. His novel The Rector's Tale was awarded a Wisconsin Arts Fellowship for best fiction that same year.
Mike is also a presenter and performance artist, entertaining thousands of people annually with his anecdotes, satires, lectures, and NPR radio commentaries. He spoke on politics and technology with Jesse Ventura, Ralph Reed, and Tony Blankley, at a symposium taped by CSPAN.
Mike is a repeat panelist on the Peabody-nominated "intellectual quiz show," Mental Engineering.
He has performed one-man shows on Irish history and the creative impulse. He has written, a full-length biography of his dog. He is the author of countless small books of poems. He has appeared before groups from São Paulo to London to Honolulu.
TransCompetition: Moving Beyond Competition and Collaboration
Why Change Doesn't Work: Why Initiatives Go Wrong and How To Try Again — and Succeed
Why Teams Don't Work: What Went Wrong and How To Make It Right 2nd Ed.