Fortune called Tom Peters the Ur-guru of management, and compares him to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and H.L. Mencken. The Economist tagged him the Uber-guru; and BusinessWeek's take on his "unconventional views" led them to label him "business's best friend and worst nightmare." In 2004 the Bloomsbury Press book Movers and Shakers reviewed the contributions of 125 business and management thinkers and practitioners, from Machiavelli and JP Morgan to Tom and Jack Welch. Tom's summary entry:

"Tom Peters has probably done more than anyone else to shift the debate on management from the confines of boardrooms, academia, and consultancies to a broader, worldwide audience, where it has become the staple diet of the media and managers alike. Peter Drucker has written more and his ideas have withstood a longer test of time, but it is Peters—as consultant, writer, columnist, seminar lecturer, and stage performer—whose energy, style, influence, and ideas have shaped new management thinking."

Tom & Bob Waterman coauthored In Search of Excellence in 1982; the book was named by NPR (in 1999) as one of the "Top Three Business Books of the Century," and ranked as the "greatest business book of all time" in a poll by Britain's Bloomsbury Publishing (2002).

Tom followed with a string of international bestsellers: A Passion for Excellence (1985, with Nancy Austin), Thriving on Chaos (1987), Liberation Management (1992: acclaimed as the "Management Book of the Decade" for the '90s), The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations (1993), The Pursuit of WOW! (1994); The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness (1997); and in 1999 a series of books on Reinventing Work: The Brand You50, The Project50 and The Professional Service Firm50. In 2003 Tom and publisher Dorling Kindersley released Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age; the revolutionary book, an immediate No.1 international best seller, aims to do no less than reinvent the business book through vibrant, energetic presentation of critical ideas.

Two Tom Peters biographies have been published: Corporate Man to Corporate Skunk: The Tom Peters Phenomenon and Tom Peters: The Bestselling Prophet of the Management Revolution (part of a four-book series of business biographies on Peters, Bill Gates, Peter Drucker, and Warren Buffet). In an in-depth analytic study released by Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change in 2002, Peters scored 2nd among the top 50 "Business Intellectuals," behind Michael Porter and ahead of Peter Drucker.

Tom writes, reflects, and then presents about 75 major seminar "happenings" each year, half outside the U.S. His other passion is creating and participating in Web-based and "live" radical learning communities—in an effort to induce leaders to vigorously embrace the "Technicolor Times" and partake of a diet of audacious, disruptive re-imaginings and excellent adventures.

Born in Baltimore in 1942 and residing in "crazy Northern California" from 1974-2000, Tom now lives on a 1,600-acre Vermont working farm with his wife, the artist and entrepreneur Susan Sargent. Tom is a civil engineering graduate of Cornell (B.C.E., M.C.E.) and business graduate of Stanford (M.B.A., Ph.D.); he holds honorary doctorates from several institutions, including the State University of Management in Moscow (2004).

In the U.S. Navy from 1966-1970, he made two deployments to Vietnam (as a Navy Seabee) and survived a tour in the Pentagon. He was a senior White House drug-abuse advisor in 1973-74, and then worked at McKinsey & Co. from 1974 to 1981, becoming a partner and Organization Effectiveness practice leader in 1979. Tom is a Fellow of the International Academy of Management, The World Productivity Association, the International Customer Service Association, and the Society for Quality and Participation.