Edu De La Chica

Having moved from the rapid, often chaotic pace of startups into the more deliberate structure of a public institution, I found Tommaso’s book to be both timely and unnervingly accurate. It speaks to the exact tension many of us feel but rarely manage to articulate: the friction between energy and order, between creativity and protocol. Startups tend to celebrate movement. Often, any movement. Public institutions, by contrast, are built to endure. Ideas in startups run the risk of burning out. Ideas in institutions risk being buried under layers of process. Neither extreme works, and yet most of us are stuck navigating somewhere in between. What makes this book stand out is that it doesn’t offer some abstract theory or nostalgic comparison. Tommaso has lived this reality, and it shows. His writing is clean, insightful, and filled with examples that feel honest. He doesn’t shy away from the complexity. Instead, he offers a way through it, anchored in experience and full of nuance. It’s not a book about how to be more efficient, or more agile, or more anything. It’s a book about how to work smarter within systems that are often messy, and how to push good ideas forward without letting them get diluted or delayed. For anyone working at the intersection of vision and bureaucracy, especially those trying to make something meaningful happen inside large organizations, this is an essential read. It won’t give you all the answers, but it will give you much better questions to ask.