The Accidental CEO.

Rebel with a Cause: The Entrepreneur Who Created the University of Phoenix and the For-Profit Revolution in Higher Education

By John Sperling

John Wiley & Sons. 255 pp.

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, is as good a time as any to nominate the CEO most likely to be underrated by future generations. nominate John Sperling, chairman and CEO of the Apollo Group and self-described "unintentional entrepreneur and accidental CEO."

Why? Sperling's unflinching honesty in recounting his childhood of poverty and illiteracy in the Ozarks; his battles over academic accreditation and "the war on drugs;" his investments in cloning, anti-aging, and in crops that can grow amidst salt and sand; and, especially, his founding of a big, profitable public university that will probably generate more MBA holders than any other, all add up to a CEO whose life will echo, even thunder, for decades to come.

Sperling founded the University of Phoenix in his 50's with no investors and no CEO track record amidst the sort of mean-spirited opposition from accreditation agencies, competitors, and the press that would make the strongest CEOs, even you, weep in frustration. In the Bizzaro World of "education" in the U.S., competitors actually have a say in whether a newcomer gets to compete. While the U.S. government was suing AT&T, IBM, and Microsoft to boost competition within the tech industry, it turned a blind eye (or, worse, conducted FBI-led witch hunts) against a microscopic firm that had the blasphemous notion that a for-profit university should be able to offer degree courses in evenings to working professionals.

Las Vegas bookies probably would have given Sperling 100-to-1 odds against his business, but he not only survived, he grew the Apollo Group--parent of University of Phoenix and related interests--into a public company with a market capitalization (as of May 2001) of almost $7 billion, making it roughly as successful as many vastly more publicized dot-com champions.

Sperling himself admits to personal wealth in the hundreds of millions but, rather than retreat into retirement as might be expected of someone as old as the Pope (81), Sperling is making astonishingly bold investments in cloning and anti-aging research that could shake the foundations of American and global society for the rest of the 21st century.

How sad that Sperling did not get more support and acknowledgement from his fellow CEOs, many of whom have fought similar battles with entities such as the Federal Communications Commission, the International Telecommunications Union, or the Food and Drug Administration. To this day, Sperling says he hasn't received a single letter from a CEO of an established company who didn't start the company, though he says entrepreneurs write often with effusive thanks. My suggestion is to go buy the book, read it, give it to employees who have to fight battles against foes backed by the power of the status quo, and send Sperling a letter telling him what you thought of his book.

If this precis of Sperling's track record isn't enough to recommend the book to busy CEOs, here's another reason: Read it to see what happens when a CEO is willing to simply tell the whole story, without aggrandizement (Sperling emerges from the first 20 percent of the book looking Like a very strange beast) and without hype (there's only one exclamation mark in the entire book).

Most CEOs of public companies spend considerable time worrying about what investors, employees, the public, and rivals think of them, and spend considerable money on public relations and advertising to keep this opinion favorable. Sperling, asked by an editor at John Wiley to write a business book, had never read any--so he went out and read eight of them. He was appalled by the apparent absence of personal flaws. He makes up for this with the kind of honest admissions that a man who is prepared to meet death with clean hands would make.

A book Like Rebel with a Cause is dangerous, because it sets new CEO standards for both searing self-reflection and for what constitutes success.

Alex Lightman is CEO of Charmed Technology (www.charmed.com), which develops wearable computers and augmented reality. He is writing Brave New Unwired World for John Wiley and is a graduate of MIT.