Then came Steve Sanghi. Call him naive, but the vice president of Waferscale Integration Inc. took the Microchip helm in 1990 and methodically transformed the company into a powerhouse. The microcontroller and analog chip company went public in 1993 and today has 4,200 employees worldwide and is valued at more than $7.5 billion.

The secret to Sanghi's success? Well, there is no secret. It's about taking a holistic view of the organization and all of its challenges, then aligning strategy with business processes and practices, giving employees the authority to make decisions, and instilling a culture of continuous improvement. In short, it's about taking an aggregate view of the company.

In the book Driving Excellence: How the Aggregate System Turned Microchip Technology from a Failing Company to a Market Leader (Wiley), Sanghi and co-author Michael Jones, the former head of human resources at Microchip, detail the management philosophy and framework behind the transformation.

"The aggregate system is a big-picture approach that creates an exceptional management framework," said Sanghi. "Everything is connected — from designing a product, to making it, to selling it."

This book is a refreshing alternate to many flavor-of-the-week management books that focus on one tool or technique. Its recommendations are universal, applicable to both large public companies and small, emerging private ones. But, most important, the aggregate system is believable — just take a look at Microchip's financials.

— Bruce Rayner