Are CEOs among those rare people who were born lucky, never facing difficulties in life? Have they faced challenges along the way like anyone else? Or did they live through more adversity than most, making them stand out from the crowd? In this first part of the book, we'll meet people whose career is defined by adversity. They emerged as leaders through their ability to cope with it or even turn it in their favor. But even for those who eventually thrive, dealing with adversity doesn't always come easy. That's what we'll learn in this first part of the book.

In Chapter 1, you'll meet Orit Gadiesh, chairman of Bain & Company, and David Kenny, general manager of IBM Watson. Both are doing extremely well and so are their companies. But back in 1990, the company they both worked for was in great financial trouble. How did they cope with it and what did they learn from it?

In Chapter 2, we turn to external shocks that affected nearly everyone: the dot-com crisis and 9/11. We'll meet three individuals who led a company that was active during the Internet 1.0 era, and learn how they reacted when that bubble came crashing down. One of these people is someone introduced earlier in the book: David Kenny, then CEO of Digitas. The other two are Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the founders of Infosys, and Raf Keustermans, the founder of Cyganet.

Through these individuals' stories, we'll attempt to answer the following question: How do you deal with adversity?