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The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality Hardcover – August 10, 2021

by Geoffrey Moore (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 48 ratings
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NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD GOLD MEDALIST — BODY, MIND, SPIRIT PRACTICES

“Combining an extraordinary range of scholarship with an accessible and entertaining writing style, The Infinite Staircase . . . provides a coherent and unified platform for a full human life.” —Midwest Book Review

In this bold new book, high-tech’s best-known strategist makes a seminal contribution to the search for meaning in a secular era.

Two questions fundamental to human existence have always been the metaphysical “where do I fit in the grand scheme of things?” and the ethical “how should I behave?” Religion is no longer a source of answers for many people, and nothing has replaced it.

Moore uses his signature framework-based approach to answer these questions, taking us on an intellectual roller coaster ride through physics, chemistry, biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Along the way, he builds a metaphorical ladder that leads from the big bang to the need for ethical action in our daily lives.

Combining an extraordinary range of scholarship with an accessible and entertaining writing style, The Infinite Staircase:
What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality provides a coherent and unified platform for a full human life.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    232 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    BenBella Books
  4. Publication date
    August 10, 2021
  5. Dimensions
    6.25 x 0.81 x 9.31 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1950665984
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1950665983
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Geoffrey Moore has crossed the chasm from marketing to metaphysics. The result is breathtaking.”
—Guy Kawasaki

“For many years I’ve had the benefit of sage advice from Geoffrey Moore, one of the world’s most influential business strategists. In this profound, remarkable work he explores the meaning of human existence and opens our minds to a new paradigm for understanding our place in the universe and a set of strategies for living an ethical life.”
—Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce

“At IDEO we apply design thinking to our client’s toughest challenges. In The Infinite Staircase, Geoffrey Moore has used his own design thinking skills to take on the challenge of embracing a science-based understanding of how life emerged on Earth and finding within it the foundations for leading an ethical life. It is a tour de force in its own right and a book for our times.”
—Tim Brown, chair of IDEO and author of Change by Design

“Who are we? The answer to this question, the central question of the humanities, has prompted many different answers. None of the better-known answers to that question, as Geoffrey demonstrates, are wrong; each is merely incomplete, a piece of the puzzle . . . This is a daring book, to be sure—a dare that Geoffrey has answered with his trademark concision and clarity. And like all daring acts, it produces a thrill—one for which I always will be grateful.”
—Harry Beckwith, New York Times bestselling author of Selling the Invisible

“Geoffrey Moore’s The Infinite Staircase is an elegant exploration of grand questions that will change how you see the world. To the mix of physics, business, and history found in Loonshots, Moore has added biology, chemistry, linguistics, and ethics—a spectacular combination.”
—Safi Bahcall, international bestselling author of Loonshots

“Combining an extraordinary range of scholarship with an accessible and entertaining writing style, The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality provides a coherent and unified platform for a full human life.”
—Midwest Book Review

About the Author

Geoffrey Moore is an author, speaker, and high-tech business advisor best known for his seminal book, Crossing the Chasm, first published in 1990, still in print, having sold over a million copies, translated into over a dozen languages, and still being required reading in most business schools. Since then he has published six other bestselling business books and advised leading high-tech enterprises including Salesforce, Microsoft, Intel, Adobe, Autodesk, Box, Airbnb, and Splunk.

Moore has a bachelors degree in American literature from Stanford University and a PhD in English literature from the University of Washington, where his dissertation was on strategies for living in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Subsequently, he taught literature, conceptual models, and writing for four years at Olivet College before returning to the Bay Area to take up a career in business.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ BenBella Books (August 10, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 232 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1950665984
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1950665983
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.81 x 9.31 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 48 ratings

About the author

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Geoffrey A. Moore

Geoffrey A. Moore

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Geoffrey Moore is an author, speaker, and advisor who splits his consulting time between start-up companies in the Wildcat Venture Partners portfolios and established high-tech enterprises, most recently including Salesforce, Microsoft, Autodesk, F5Networks, Gainsight, Google, and Splunk.

Moore’s life’s work has focused on the market dynamics surrounding disruptive innovations. His first book, Crossing the Chasm, focuses on the challenges start-up companies face transitioning from early adopting to mainstream customers. It has sold more than a million copies, and its third edition has been revised such that the majority of its examples and case studies reference companies come to prominence from the past decade. Moore’s latest business-related work, Zone to Win, addresses the challenge large enterprises face when embracing disruptive innovations, even when it is in their best interests to do so. It’s time to stop explaining why they don’t and start explaining how they can. This has been the basis of much of his recent consulting.

In a significant departure from Moore’s lifetime of business-related consulting, Moore uses his expertise at creating frameworks and applies it to the meaning of life itself and the big question, “What is going on?”. His latest book, The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality, offers readers a complete look at how the universe has evolved and our ethical place within it. As Moore says in the book, “Our core sense of good and bad does not come from above. It is neither transcendent nor divine. Rather, it is inherent in our mammalian upbringing.”

Irish by heritage, Moore has yet to meet a microphone he didn’t like and gives between 50 and 80 speeches a year. One theme that has received a lot of attention recently is the transition in enterprise IT investment focus from Systems of Record to Systems of Engagement. This is driving the deployment of a new cloud infrastructure to complement the legacy client-server stack, creating massive markets for a next generation of tech industry leaders.

Moore has a bachelors in American literature from Stanford University and a PhD in English literature from the University of Washington. After teaching English for four years at Olivet College, he came back to the Bay Area with his wife and family and began a career in high tech as a training specialist. Over time he transitioned first into sales and then into marketing, finally finding his niche in marketing consulting, working first at Regis McKenna Inc, then with the three firms he helped found: The Chasm Group, Chasm Institute, and TCG Advisors. Today he is chairman emeritus of all three.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
48 global ratings
Highly Recommend! A Thought-Provoking Book
5 Stars
Highly Recommend! A Thought-Provoking Book
This is an important book for our times. In a world that sometimes feels like it’s spinning out of control, Moore’s Infinite Staircase makes you think about who you are and your place in the universe. In that way, I found the book to be very grounding and reaffirming. It is instructional in how it reminds us to be our best selves living our best lives, leaving legacies that hopefully carry on our best work.The first half of the book lays the groundwork for the second half. Each chapter builds on the prior one in a very logical way. I love Moore’s writing style, which explains complex concepts with great care, along with a little tongue-in-cheek quip every so often. The book is meant to make you think and contemplate, then go back for another helping of Moore’s carefully architected Staircase.I highly recommended this book!
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Top reviews from the United States

R. Robinson
5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking read
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2024
Verified Purchase
I've always been a fan of Geoffrey's work on the business side, so wanted to give this a try. Wow! His ability to communicate frameworks that bring clarity and order to complex systems lands yet again with the biggest system of them all. Deep and thought provoking read.
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Bob Erickson
5.0 out of 5 stars A Philosophy Based on a Simple, Sensible Model
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2021
Verified Purchase
In “The Infinite Staircase,” Geoffrey Moore makes an extensive departure from his previous oeuvre of business books by moving into the realm of philosophy. Like his business books, he starts with a simple model and then discusses what that model implies. In this book, the model is an eleven-step staircase that encompasses the metaphysics that Moore postulates for his philosophy. It starts with physics, concentrating on thermodynamics, and ends with the set of grand theories that man has created to explain the universe. Each step in the staircase builds on the previous step and no step influences a previous step, just as chemistry does not change the fundamentals of physics.

The staircase can be thought of in three “flights”. The first flight (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) explains what it means to be alive – how the second law of thermodynamics, continually increasing entropy, drove living organisms (once they emerged from the ooze) to succeed and become more and more complex. The second flight (Desire, Consciousness, Values and Culture) explains what it means to be a social animal, how natural selection (and similar mechanisms for groups of animals) make Values and Culture apparent in animals that don’t have complex language, like wolves and apes. The third flight (Language, Narrative, Analytics and Theory) explains what it means to be human, with Language providing the major difference between humans and other animals.

The final step, Theory, is the overarching “theory of everything” that people use to guide their lives. This baffled me at first since it seemed indulgently self-referential until I realized that most people have a theory – usually a religion – and almost none of them subscribe to the metaphysics of the staircase. Moore points out that one flaw in these other theories is that they attempt to impose restrictions from the top down onto the lower steps of the staircase instead of deriving a theory from the bottom up.

Once you buy into the staircase as your theory of everything, Moore goes on to discuss how the staircase can imply an approach to ethics. He describes what it means to be good and to do good and how those are different at each step of the staircase.

Finally, Moore discusses the implications of mortality – what happens after death will look a lot like what happened before birth. Get over it. Your goal should be to do something that lasts beyond your lifetime. Your children, your work, art and books of philosophy are some of the possibilities.

I believe this is an important book that may be overlooked because it came from someone outside the academic world. One hundred ninety-three pages can’t cover all you need to understand about “Life, Ethics and Mortality,” but it is a good starting point that I hope others will develop further.
9 people found this helpful
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Fred Cheyunski
4.0 out of 5 stars Ascend for Enlightenment and Integrity
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2022
Having read most of Moore’s business books (e.g., see my review of his "Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers") and remembering his early background in the liberal arts, I was intrigued to see this title and eager to get the book when it came out.

As in his other work, the author serves as an integrator, but in this one conveying a secular means of understanding the world around us and our place in it as human beings. His intent is to provide an up to date means of acting effectively and wisely as individuals within a disrupted environment.

Contents include a Preface, 10 chapters in two Parts and a Conclusion. Namely, there is Part One: Metaphysics; (1) The Purpose of Metaphysics - The Infinite Staircase; (2) The Metaphysics of Entropy: What Is Entropy? Stair 1: Physics: Entropy and the Aftermath of the Big Bang, Stair 2: Chemistry: The Emergence of Emergence, Stair 3: Biology: ". . . Then a Miracle Occurs;" (3) The Metaphysics of Darwinism: What Is Darwinism? Stair 4: Desire: The Darwinian Mean, Stair 5: Consciousness: A Darwinian Theory of Forms, Stair 6: Values: A Darwinian Social Contract, Stair 7: Culture: The Transformation of Evolution: From Genes to Memes; (4) The Metaphysics of Memes - What Are Memes? Stair 8: Language: The Fabric and Fabricator of Memes, Stair 9: Narrative: Inventing Strategies for Living, Stair 10: Analytics: Testing and Refining Strategies for Living, Stair 11: Theory: One Meme to Rule Them All; and (5) Being: A Bridge to Ethics. Then comes Part Two: (6) Making the Turn; (7) Understanding Goodness; (8) Honoring the Ego; (9) Doing Good; and (10) Being Mortal. After the Conclusion follow Acknowledgments, an extensive Bibliography (divided by chapter) and an Index.

As typical with Moore’s books a standout aspect for me are his framework and diagrams (see pg. 8, then later as on pgs. 144 and 158 where different aspects come together). The “Infinite Staircase” is his schema for depicting what is knowable from the physical sciences, social sciences, and the humanities as a basis for considered action (e.g., see my reviews of related books such as Nurse’s “What is Life?” Gopnik’s “The Carpenter and the Gardner,” and Denham’s “Northrop Frye and Critical Method”). Those from any one area can be at odds with the core thesis of this book that, the fundamental basis of reality does not reside on any one stair but rather in the staircase itself.

Drawbacks include some aspects like his discussion of “Being” or his work to forge physical basis for “Goodness.” This book is more of a philosophical work, but it seems there could have been a more direct connection with consciousness and Eastern thought. It seems Moore is using principles from say the Buddhist tradition with its links between “mindfulness” and “right action” (e.g., see Kornfield’s “The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology” and my review of Kolts’s “Compassionate-Mind Guide”).

Even with its contortions in some places, it is worth ascending Moore’s “Infinite Staircase” for further enlightenment and integrity in our activities.
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Sabrina Horn
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommend! A Thought-Provoking Book
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2021
Verified Purchase
This is an important book for our times. In a world that sometimes feels like it’s spinning out of control, Moore’s Infinite Staircase makes you think about who you are and your place in the universe. In that way, I found the book to be very grounding and reaffirming. It is instructional in how it reminds us to be our best selves living our best lives, leaving legacies that hopefully carry on our best work.

The first half of the book lays the groundwork for the second half. Each chapter builds on the prior one in a very logical way. I love Moore’s writing style, which explains complex concepts with great care, along with a little tongue-in-cheek quip every so often. The book is meant to make you think and contemplate, then go back for another helping of Moore’s carefully architected Staircase.

I highly recommended this book!
Customer image
Sabrina Horn
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommend! A Thought-Provoking Book
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2021
This is an important book for our times. In a world that sometimes feels like it’s spinning out of control, Moore’s Infinite Staircase makes you think about who you are and your place in the universe. In that way, I found the book to be very grounding and reaffirming. It is instructional in how it reminds us to be our best selves living our best lives, leaving legacies that hopefully carry on our best work.

The first half of the book lays the groundwork for the second half. Each chapter builds on the prior one in a very logical way. I love Moore’s writing style, which explains complex concepts with great care, along with a little tongue-in-cheek quip every so often. The book is meant to make you think and contemplate, then go back for another helping of Moore’s carefully architected Staircase.

I highly recommended this book!
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4 people found this helpful
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Ismael
5.0 out of 5 stars Muy recomendable
Reviewed in Spain on July 6, 2023
Verified Purchase
Peculiar, distinto. Pero impresiona una teoría metafísica desarrollada por quien es un conocido consultor de estrategia. El autor es un especialista que no deja de ver el marco general de las cosas.
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