Sam Tyler

As executive producer of The Excellence Files, Sam explores the surprising new measures by which companies today are judged successful. The 90-minute documentary profiles eight companies that collectively represent the competitive thinking for the 21st century. In The Entrepreneurial Revolution, a PBS documentary that aired in April 1997, Mr. Tyler investigated the impact of entrepreneurship on the American economy and local communities.

He is currently head of a team preparing The Chain of Greatness, a book about how well-established organizations can resolve corporate problems by taking a cue from successful entrepreneurs. A related PBS special on this project will air in the autumn of 1999.

A graduate of Princeton University, Mr. Tyler entered the world of high-quality programming in 1976 when he joined the staff of public television station WGBH in Boston. As a senior management member, he helped raise funds to support WGBH's local broadcasting operation and national programming endeavors. He coordinated funding for The Advocates, Evening at Pops, Frontline, Julia Child and Company, Nova and This Old House. On behalf of WGBH, he worked with such clients as ARCO, Digital, Dun & Bradstreet, Exxon, IBM, Merrill Lynch and Polaroid. After leaving WGBH in 1982, Mr. Tyler founded a production company dedicated to telling in-depth business success stories of interest to executives worldwide.

Mr. Tyler has since become well-known in the business and management communities, producing such projects as a successful audio cassette series for entrepreneurs, funded by The Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City; The Harvard Business School Video Series, of which its first product, Michael Porter on Competitive Strategy, sold more than 4,000 cassettes in two years; and The Fortune Magazine Video Seminars.