Books
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Joe Nocera's Best Business Books Ever
Nocera favored the story and tale over the tactics and theory. We think you need to read a wide range of books to get the mental nutrition you need for a well-balanced business diet.
Jack Covert Selects - Management Lesson From Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic has grown exponentially over the years, but has retained its human touch throughout. How has Mayo Clinic done it? Leonard Barry and Kent Seltman answer that question with this book.What to Say to a Porcupine
What to Say to a Porcupine is a book that contains twenty different tales all centering around customer service and it offers topics for group (or single) discussion at the end of each fable.What's Online: Why Some Succeed Wildly
A forthcoming book that examines how mega-success is achieved is already receiving much attention on the Web. (Subscription required)Neat organization at new NYC bookstore
Idlewild Books, a new travel bookstore in Manhattan with a terrific organizational scheme. It shelves guidebooks with travel literature related to that place. "So the Ireland section has a bunch of Ireland-related travel guides plus Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," Jess says.Book Examines Looming Pension Debts in America
Business journalist Roger Lowenstein talks about his new book, While America Aged, which looks at how corporations and governments came to make pension and health care obligations to workers — and what is happening as the bills come due. (Audio
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A Guided Tour of 'Your Brain'
Two neuroscientists have written a book for a general audience to debunk misconceptions about how the human brain works. The result is Welcome To Your Brain. (Audio)
Tool Kit: Small-Business Books That Break the Mold
Here are some books on small business that offer more than platitudes and unreachable goals. (Subscription required)Labor Pains
The outlook for the American worker: increasingly hostile. (Subscription required)Booksellers' Selections for Summer Afternoons
What better way to spend a summer afternoon — or a spring, fall or winter afternoon for that matter — than curled up with a good book? NPR Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg asks three independent booksellers for their picks for the summer. (Audio)
How to read a business book
A lot of people read business books in just the same way. They cruise through the case studies or the insights or examples and imagine what it would be like to be that brilliant entrepreneur or that successful CEO or that great sales rep. A pleasant adventure. There’s a huge gap between most how-to books (cookbooks, gardening, magic, etc.) and business books, though. The gap is motivation.C.K. Prahalad: The New Age of Innovation
A new book from the Bottom of the Pyramid guru lays out the new landscape of business, driven by consumer co-creation and service customization.What is Wrong With Business Books?! - Part II - Todd S.
On the heals of my Fast Company news, I found a wonderful essay that berates business books. Yes, I said wonderful. An anonymous writer under the byline "Uncle Saul" wrote The Author's Dilemma - Why Most Business Books Suck for socialtech.com. The piece is clearly written by a book reader as it points the vast number of ways business books fail the entrepreneurs.First-Time Novelists Make a Splash on the Web
It's more and more common for debut novels to have elaborate homes on the Web, complete with blogs, chatrooms, videos and games. Often the sites are richly illustrated, almost cinematic. (Audio)
A Book Publisher's Manifesto
For all of you interested in what the future of publishing will look like, Sara Lloyd has begun posting her essay on the topic over at the digitalist...Jack Covert Selects - It's Our Ship
In his new book, Abrashoff returns to his experience on the Benfold, this time focusing solely on leadership lessons. He asserts that there are key skills a good leader needs to learn. He offers 8 of them, and each skill is represented in a chapter within the book.From Sweeper to Capitol Hill Staffer, 'Step By Step'
For six decades, Bertie Bowman has worked on Capitol Hill. He began as a 13-year-old sweeping the steps, and now he is the hearing scheduler for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In between, he forged friendships with some of the most prominent members of the Senate. Co-host Steve Inskeep talks to Bowman about those experiences, which he has recorded in a new memoir Step by Step. (Audio)
Dusting Off a Managing Tome
More than 30 years after Management's initial publication, a Peter Drucker protégé refreshes the landmark work.The bottom line? Lighten up a bit
In their new book, "The Levity Effect," Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher contend that having a sense of humor in the office can actually help the bottom line. They shared that view with Kai Ryssdal.Digging Inside Steve’s Brain
Lots have been written about Steve Jobs and Apple. Kahney’s book, though, runs the full gamut on sharing the business mindset that drives Jobs and drives Apple to succeed. You’ll learn insights into developing new products, designing the customer experience, fostering an innovation spirit, hiring top talent, and sharing passion to “… put a ding in the universe.”To the Rescue
16 APR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»
When corporate executives sit down to write a book, the result is often a bland recitation of accomplishments, a few charmingly self-deprecating admissions of mistakes, and a handful of business formulas that might help you, the reader, achieve similar success. "The Turnaround Kid" is not one of those books.(Subscription required)
Hat tip: 800-CEO-READ
He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)
A professor has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a given subject, turn them into books, printed on demand or delivered digitally. (Subscription required)Underground economy is booming
Best estimates are that about 15% to 20% of the world's economy happens off the books. Journalist Mischa Glenny takes a tour of the underground economy in his new book, "McMafia." He talks about it with Kai Ryssdal.Real World 2.0
In a new book, Here Comes Everybody, author and academic Clay Shirky argues the future is here; it's time to get on with it.Defending the business book genre
If the question is whether every best seller is worth reading, I'd respond without a doubt, no. If that were true, we (as a company) would not exist in the blogosphere. If the question is whether business books are worth reading, they are. Not every single one of them is worth reading. And finding the right one is not always easy. To stand on my pulpit here, that's what we endeavor to help with--finding the right business book for you. Please, don't be afraid of the business book aisle, many a title is worth a gander.Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90
British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke, author of more than 100 books, dies in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.Megacommunity: Where Governments, Organizations and People Work Together to Take on Issues
"The root cause of the challenges confronting these leaders is complexity: the growing density of linkages among people, organizations, and issues all across the world. Because people communicate so easily across national and organizational boundaries, the conventional managerial decision-making style--in which a boss exercises decision rights or delegates them to subordinates--is no longer adequate. Solutions require multi-organizational systems that are larger and more oriented to multilateral action than conventional cross-sector approaches are."Peace through business?
In his most recent book, "The War of the World," Harvard historian Niall Ferguson says economic instability leads to conflict but viable market economies can end it -- especially in the Middle East. He spoke with Kai Ryssdal.Memo to the CEO
Harvard Business Press has begun publishing a series of 100 page books called Memos to the CEO. The Publisher's Note from the beginning of the book sums them up perfectly.Career Advice from a Comic Book
FEB 21 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»
What most Americans know of manga, those stylized Japanese comics, is that the stories are fantastical, edgy, and defiantly indifferent to most anyone past a certain age. Now, though, comes word that manga is starting to go all adult and practical on us: The first business comic book is on its way. It's called The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need, and it's written by Daniel H. Pink, the author of two trend-setting books about the workplace, Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind.
As a nation, we must embrace innovation.
"If Orsen Welles and Peter Drucker were somehow to mate, the resulting progeny might resemble John Kao, a serial innovator."After the Boomers
Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow has a new book that outlines "the demographic differences between young adults today and his own generation," reports Naomi Schaefer Riley in The Wall Street Journal (1/18/08).Harvard Research to Be Free Online
Harvard University will soon begin posting research and articles produced by its faculty on the Internet for free.New Spanish Titles
8 FEB 2008 from 800-CEO-READ | Read the full story»
Many times throughout the year we get asked if books are ever available in other languages. Sometimes, as in audio, publishers are not in control of whether a title goes into another translation. It depends solely on other countries that will request it from them or if they can buy the rights to get it in their language.
Seemed Like a Good Idea Inc.
06 FEB 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»
Blue french fries. A colorless soda that tastes funny. A frozen soup-and-sandwich convenience food that turned out to be inconveniently labor intensive. These products not only failed in the marketplace, but did so predictably, at least in the eyes of Calvin L. Hodock, a marketing guru whose "Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things" is all about the many ways that innovation can go wrong. (Subscription required)
Hat tip: 800-CEO-READ blog
The Real Start of Something New
JAN 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»
Entrepreneurship is "a very common vocation," Mr. Shane writes. "Each year in the United States more people start a business than get married or have children. And as much as 40 percent of the US population will be self-employed for some part of their work life." What is the typical entrepreneur like? Does he fit our popular image of the go-getting jet-setter? Not so much.
Hat tip: 800-CEO-READ
Jack Covert Selects - Do the Right Thing
Parker tells us that "[t]he overriding lesson I learned doesn't involve a lot of management guru buzzwords and acronyms. It is the simplest of principles, which we learned from childhood: When in doubt, just do the right thing."Leadership: Lessons from a "Fat Smoker"
"We know what to do, we know why we should do it and we know how to do it. Yet most businesses and individuals don’t do what’s good for them." That conundrum is what David Maister calls the "fat smoker syndrome" and is the driving theme he explores his newest book (the aptly titled) Strategy and the Fat Smoker.Does Judgment Trump Experience?
The publication of a new book, Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls, by Warren Bennis and Noel Tichy warrants attention if for no other reason than the range of experiences that they bring to the topic. The event coincides with an issue that has arisen in the U.S. presidential campaign, an issue of broad relevance: Does judgment trump experience?The Inside Advantage
An Inside Advantage is an unexploited strength in a company that can be used to spur growth. Bloom believes every company has one, and that the path to growth starts with identifying this unique strength and using it to strengthen the company and brand as a whole. He lays out a system for finding and using that Inside Advantage he calls The Growth Discovery Process, and that process has four steps--WHO, WHAT, HOW, and OWN IT!Venti Capitalists
A look at Starbucks as a corporate juggernaut. (Subscription required)Must-Watch Video: "Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price"
This is a video of Chris Anderson discussing his next book. Chris is the editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail. (Video
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Jack Covert Selects - Human Sigma
In Human Sigma, John H. Fleming and Jim Asplund paint a grim picture of business and the traps some companies fall into. Organizations create a world where computerized machines run everything and humans are expendable creatures that offer no contribution. The authors even call this sort of business practice "Terminator Management." Fleming and Asplund acknowledge that this is the extreme, but they caution that the business world is on its way to becoming a misguided, thoughtless, emotionless machine.Ways 'Authentic' Leaders Acquire Management Skills
Bill George, a former CEO and teacher at Harvard Business School, discusses his new book on developing what he calls an 'authentic' approach to leadership.Bloomberg suggests business books for gifts
We've been in Chicago for the past two days for our second annual Author Pow-wow. I'll write more on that soon. There's much to share.Freedom Just Ahead: The War Within the Civil War
In recently discovered texts, John Washington and Wallace Turnage recorded their lives as slaves and the bold bids for freedom that took them across Confederate lines and into the waiting arms of Union soldiers.The Opposable Mind
I've been reading the Opposable Mind by Roger Martin. We humans have long been distinguished from other animals by our opposable thumbs... Likewise, our opposable mind enables us to consider two separate ideas simultaneously. We can use the tension between and elements of these two ideas to create new possibilities. A process which Roger labels integrative thinking.Surprised by Opportunity
14 NOV 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»
Mr. Duggan, who teaches strategy at Columbia Business School, argues that the commonplace formula has it backward. Instead of setting goals first, he says, it is better to watch for opportunities with large payoffs at low costs and only then set your goals. That is what innovators throughout history have done, as Mr. Duggan shows in a deliriously fast-paced tour of history. (Subscription required)
Hat tip: 800-CEO-READ
Six Steps for Reinvigorating America
Kanter believes America at the start of the 21st century has lost its way both as a beacon to the world and as a can-do nation.The Trouble with Asia's Tigers
29 OCT 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»
Asia's economic ascendancy by turns awes and terrifies Western executives. Yet it's China and India that fascinate now—not the once-fabled Southeast Asian Tiger economies.
Hat tip: 800-CEO-READ
A Cookbook of One’s Own From the Internet
A new Web site, TasteBook.com, allows users to create hardcover cookbooks drawn from recipes in Condé Nast’s archive. (Subscription required)Save your money, forget school...Here is what business is
From The HP Way, is the best description of what "Business" is...Collective Wisdom: 'We Are Smarter Than Me'
When Barry Libert and Jon Spector set out to explore how social networking might help businesses, they allowed just about anyone with an idea to help write the book. Thousands of people contributed to We Are Smarter Than Me, which is about the wisdom of crowds.Are B-Schools a Blight on the Land?
05 NOV 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»
Khurana's From Higher Aims to Hired Hands is an important and surprisingly disparaging look at business-school education in the U.S. from the late 19th century to the present.
Hat tip: 800-CEO-READ
Want to create change? Tell a story.
Change happens when people are inspired.'The Art of Woo': Selling Your Ideas to the Entire Organization, One Person at a Time
Using relationship-based, emotionally intelligent persuasion to secure both individual and organization-wide buy-in, everyone from CEOs and entrepreneurs to team leaders and mid-level managers can sell their ideas -- a skill that everyone needs to learn if they want to be effective in their organizations, the authors say.More Buzz Than Deals at Frankfurt Book Fair
In recent years, the fair has become more of a chance to schmooze and build buzz for deals down the road. (Subscription required)'Best-Seller' -- What Does It Mean to Be One?
The New York Times best-seller list used to be the gold standard of the publishing world. But these days, there is a proliferation of lists, and stores prominently display their own "best-sellers." So what does it mean to be a best-seller? (Audio)
10 Years of Free Agency, and Growing Fast
08 OCT 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»
It has been 10 years since Dan Pink wrote an article for Fast Company called "Free Agent Nation" that spawned his classic book by the same title. So it seems a fitting time to check in on the state of free agency since Mr. Pink started chronicling it. (Subscription required)
Best Books To Make Best Workplaces
Last week, The Wall Street Journal announced their Top Small Workplaces 2007 winners. The Journal asked the folks who run those places what books they would recommend to others trying to create first-class workplaces.Jack Covert Selects - Better
[Gawande's] new book, Better, is about the quest to improve the status quo, and in medicine, this translates directly into saved lives. Gawande suggests there are three aspects to the struggle to improve: diligence, doing it right and ingenuity.The FDA: What Will the Next 100 Years Bring?
The agency is responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, biologics (biotech products derived from living sources such as cells), over-the-counter medicines, medical devices, cosmetics, nutritional supplements, and all food products, with the exception of meat and poultry. And the breadth of the work, not to mention the volume, is staggering.Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism
15 SEP 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»
One of the most influential business books ever written is a 1,200-page novel published 50 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1957. It is still drawing readers; it ranks 388th on Amazon.com’s best-seller list. ("Winning," by John F. Welch Jr., at a breezy 384 pages, is No. 1,431.) The book is "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand’s glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest.
Super Crunchers
Ian Ayres thought "The End of Intuition" would be a great name for his new book — until he ran the numbers and saw that more people would buy a book called "Super Crunchers," reports The Economist (9/15/07).Everyone Talking About Greenspan Book
With the book slated to come out Monday, Alan Greenspan's book The Age of Turbulence is the latest to fall victim to impatience.Kilts
To hear Jim Kilts tell it, his M.O. in C.P.G. was all about Z.O.G., F.E., and T.I., suggests Kenneth Roman in a Wall Street Journal book review of "Doing What Matters" (9/5/07).Book Review: Law of the Blog
Law of the Blog sets out to cover a set of interlocking topics that are important to many web workers: how to navigate the increasingly-complex and muddled thicket of American online law without getting your pants sued off.Too much of a good thing?
For many Americans, capitalism equals democracy. But in his new book former Labor Secretary Robert Reich questions the appropriateness of that equation.Two New Fables Break-up Summer Bestsellers Club
After a summer of same-old, same-old on the Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller List, two new books appear this week signaling the start to the fall business book season.A Space for Us
03 SEP 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»
I’d jumped into the social-networking site after a fellow author told me I absolutely had to use MySpace to promote my forthcoming book... So here I was navigating though pages of Hello Kitty wallpaper and frat brothers wearing chicken heads. Supposedly, thousands of writers had migrated onto MySpace, but where were they? Eventually, through trial and error, I discovered the best way to find them: if you type the right word into the site’s search engine — say, "Foucault" or "Kafka" — you will tumble through the rabbit hole into MySpace’s literary scene. (Subscription required)
Shallow lesson of business books
27 AUG 2007 from the Financial Times | Read the full story»
The poolside is twice as pleasurable this year because swimming is so much more enjoyable. The credit goes to pioneers of new methods of swimming instruction, Steven Shaw and Terry Laughlin. In my experience, most swimming lessons are delivered by charming young Australians, excellent swimmers who have been at home in the water since they were young children. They regard those who flounder in the water with incomprehension. They say "watch me" as they vanish towards the other end of the pool. (Subscription required)
Publisher Tries 'American Idol'-Style Talent Hunt
An audience-driven online competition -- and a panel of expert judges -- picked two aspiring novelists from among 2,600 would-be literary lights. Now their books are coming to a Borders near you. (Audio)
Five Business Book Classics - The Essay
There are M&A books, and there are business books that should be required reading for every executive. Here are five guaranteed to help you be more productive and make smarter decisions.Breaking the Code
The authors of The Catalyst Code explain how to start a business by bringing others together.Mule library
Bibliomulas are mules toting mini-libraries to remote communities in Venezuela in an effort to encourage reading. Sometimes, the mules also carry projectors and laptop computers. A BBC News reporter recently took a trip with the Bibliomulas through the foothills of the Andes.
And Now, Folks, Behold the 15-Minute Publisher
In the book business, few things are faster than the Espresso Book Machine, the product of a high-tech publishing venture that has nothing to do with caffeine. (Subscription required)Thumbs up for good manners
I'm all for a rise in civility in the workplace. So too is Steve Harrison, chairman of management-consultants Lee Hecht Harrison, who has written a book called The Manager's Book of Decencies.How Freakonomics came to be
I've been following the Freakonomics blog a lot lately (and they just suggested another economist's blog). Today, Stephen Dubner explained how Freakonomics came to be. Back in 2003 Hugo Lindgren, an editor for New York magazine, asked Dubner to profile...Books of the Times: A Zoologist With a Pouch of Stories
Tim Flannery says that Australia’s national symbol could well be the most remarkable animal that has ever lived.The Boom Beyond Our Borders
18 JUL 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»
Book Review by MATTHEW REES
Anyone interested in the marvel of modern-day China and India routinely encounters a host of "gee whiz" factoids that illustrate each country's high-octane growth. Shanghai, for example, had 15 skyscrapers in 1978; by last year it had about 3,800, more than Los Angeles and Chicago combined. India, meanwhile, is home to three of the world's 10 biggest information-technology firms, and IBM employs 53,000 people there -- an increase since 1992 of ... 53,000.
Yet it's just as easy to uncover bad news. ... In "The Elephant and the Dragon," Robyn Meredith, a Hong Kong-based correspondent for Forbes magazine, neatly navigates between the boom and the gloom.
Ten Questions with Jeffrey Pfeffer
Question: What can companies do to get smarter?
Answer: Companies learn just like people learn—by trying new things and seeing what happens. That requires, first, a tolerance for failure, since by definition, learning means doing things you aren’t very good at.A Conversation Begets a BIG Idea (and a Brilliant Book)
[W]hen I got wind of The Age of Conversation--a precedent-setting collaborative book by 103 authors hailing from every U.S. time zone, Canada, Australia, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, India and Oman--I didn’t have to be told why or how it was unique. Why? Because the very idea of the book is unique. The idea being: collectively we are smarter, savvier and more valuable to readers than we are independently.Chicago Sun-Times reviews "Apples are Square"
In Apples are Square: Thinking Differently about Leadership Susan and Thomas Kuczmarski contend that, aside from sincere efforts made some companies, we haven't learned our proverbial lesson after Enron. We continue to see scandals and departures as leaders leave positions because of unethical (or illegal) behavior.Avoiding the Traps That Can Cause Your Company to Self-Destruct
In The Self Destructive Habits of Good Companies ... And How to Break Them (Wharton School Publishing), Jagdish N. Sheth, a marketing professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, analyzes why companies that are at the top of their industry suddenly disappear from the landscape.Is Your Workforce Strange Enough to Guarantee Competitive Advantage?
According to Daniel M. Cable, what characterizes successful companies these days is "a strikingly different, obsessively focused" workforce, one that -- compared to competitors' workforces -- is "downright strange."'Life Behind the Veil': Launching a Beauty School in Kabul, Afghanistan
In Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil, author Deborah Rodriguez opens a window onto the private lives of Afghan women by explaining what it's like to try and launch a business -- in this case, a beauty school -- in a remote, unfamiliar area. The tale, according to our reviewer, is heartwarming, eye-opening and ultimately chilling.The Cult of The Amateur
Gambling on the Big Win
13 JUN 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»
Exhaustively chronicling the lessons in branding and management that he acquired during his four-decade career at P&G, Mr. Pepper offers a rare glimpse into a notoriously insular corporate culture. He also provides -- through detailed anecdotes and frank admissions of business missteps -- a well-rounded portrait of the challenges of managing mega-brands for a consumer-products titan and one of the world's biggest advertisers. (Subscription required)
Jack Covert Selects - Coolhunting - 800-CEO-READ
In Coolhunting, Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper claim that you can develop the ability to predict the next big thing.Professional Dish-Washer Shares Tales From the Pit
Washing dishes was not a stepping stone for Pete Jordan, but a calling that spanned 12 years and 50 states. He takes readers to the heart of the kitchen -- the dish pit -- in "Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States."4-Hour Workweek
Timothy Ferris used to work 14-hour days and make $40,000. Today, at 29, he says he works four hours a week and makes $40,000 a month, reports Michelle Archer in USA Today (6/11/07). At least some of that income is derived from his best-selling book, The 4-Hour Workweek...Managing 'what's in it for me?' workers
Author Cam Marston's new book details how Baby Boom managers are having to deal with so-called New Millenials — young workers accustomed to praise who need more motivation to perform even simple job tasks.Set Up to Fail
JUN 2007 from the Harvard Business Review | Read the full story»
In his recent book Why Most Things Fail, theoretical economist Paul Ormerod argues that failure is the defining characteristic of biological, social, and economic systems. But Ormerod, a former economic forecaster and now principal of Volterra, the London-based consulting firm he cofounded, doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. Giving in to chance, expecting failure, and reacting flexibly, he says, is essential to success. (Subscription required)
Success With a Human Face
01 JUN 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»
The company is rightly seen as a legend -- a smart, innovative and civic-minded enterprise that, over 70 years, has embodied the best of American braininess and business acumen. In "Bill & Dave," the H-P story is told by Michael S. Malone, a journalist and onetime company employee whose enthusiasm for H-P seems to know no bounds. (Subscription required)
Hat tip: 800-CEO-READ Blog
Survey: Read Any Good Books Lately?
We asked a handful of writers what books they’ve enjoyed most over the last few months, and why. Their choices — from best sellers to poetry collections to a philosophy of science — are idiosyncratic and instructive. (Subscription required)The Known World
A refresher course on the fundamentals of science that every person should master.Reading Books... Here to Stay?
Are books soon to be a thing of the past? How many books are you reading a year? With chaotic schedules and endless days is there time any more to read? What are you missing?Book: Superuse
You could recycle, discard or even burn them of course: cable reels, window frames, washing machines, diapers, crates, carpet tiles, double glazing panels or old buses. The other option is to put them to good use: Superuse.
Jack Covert Selects - Off-Ramps and On-Ramps - 800-CEO-READ
There’s a new book out this month, and it’s an important one. “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps” is a much-needed look into a critical problem in our business world: the current career model and its lack of flexibility for talented women.MarketingProfs Book Club Returns with 'Made to Stick'
'Made To Stick' analyzes why some ideas survive while many others die. But that’s not all: the authors have deconstructed why ideas that didn’t have revenue incentives, like urban legends and fables, have amplified across social groups and over many generations to develop a 6-point “SUCCESs” system pinpointing how to get our messages to stick (and stay stuck).The Greatest Mystery: Making a Best Seller
13 MAY 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»
WHEN Shana Kelly, a literary agent at the William Morris Agency, submitted Curtis Sittenfeld’s first novel, Cipher, to book publishers in 2003, she had high expectations. She contacted nearly two dozen high-ranking editors at major publishers, expecting every one to make offers for her client’s coming-of-age story set at a boarding school.
Within weeks, though, most editors had passed. ...
Random House published Cipher in January 2005, renaming it Prep and backing it with a clever marketing and publicity campaign. But the initial print run was just 13,000 copies ...
Prep proceeded to confound all expectations by making the New York Times best-seller list a month after publication. The hardcover, with a cover price of $21.95, eventually sold more than 133,000 copies ... (Subscription required)
Tips on Profiting from Business Risks
"Survival Kit for Small and Medium Businesses -- Profit from your Business Risks!" seeks to help owners create a business plan that identifies potential risks for their ventures.James Dyson on living a life of failure
"Against the Odds” is the autobiography of vacuum guru James Dyson. Jason recently mentioned it in our internal Campfire chat room: “One of the best books about design, business, invention, and entrepreneurship I’ve ever read. Highly recommended."Halo Effect Review - Todd S.
If you read business books, you are going want to read this.See Jane Lead
I'm always interested in business books directed specifically toward women in business.How Do Managers Think?
Ask an artist how she creates a work of art, and chances are she can't tell you in a way that would enable you to do it. Similarly, managers I've observed over the years have great difficulty dissecting how they make tough decisions.Rediscovering Schumpeter: The Power of Capitalism
| Q&A with: | Thomas McCraw |
| Published: | May 7, 2007 |
| Author: | Sean Silverthorne |
If capitalism was the most influential single economic and social force of the 20th century (and continuing today), there is no better guide to understanding its power and complexity than famed economist Joseph Schumpeter, says Harvard Business School's Thomas K. McCraw. “I think Schumpeter is the most penetrating analyst of capitalism who ever lived. He saw things other people didn't see.”