Authors: Kenneth A Kim. John R. Nofsinger.
Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Publication Date: 2006-04-02
Edition: 2

Reviews :

    The first of its kind, Nofsinger provides an overview of our corporate governance system in a flexible, modular format. Today, the term "corporate governance" is familiar to almost everyone. Unfortunately, its familiarity in our society comes about because of revelations of one shocking corporate scandal after another: executives caught pilfering from their firms; accountants helping companies doctor their financial numbers; analysts irresponsibly hyping internet stocks. Nofsingeris organized into chapters that discuss each corporate governance mechanism. Every chapter is organized in the same way, and each chapter is self-contained. Each chapter begins with a detailed overview of the monitor or monitoring mechanism, and then highlights potential problems....

Authors: Bill Quinn.
Paperback, 158 pages
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Publication Date: 2005-04
Edition: 3 Rev Upd

Reviews :

    After carving up the once lovingly cared-for downtowns of Small Town America, Wal-Mart launched a frontal assault on small businesses all over the globe. With 1.5 million employees operating more than 3,500 stores, Wal-Mart is now the world's largest private employer. In this third edition of How Wal-Mart is Destroying America (and the World), intrepid Texas newspaperman Bill Quinn continues the fight, detailing Wal-Mart's questionable business practices, and much more....

Authors: Ralph W. Andrews.
Paperback, 176 pages
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
Publication Date: 1994-03


Reviews :

    The reissue of the classic history about the sawmill industry in the Pacific Northwest is rich in memories. Here is the vital and true story of the triumphant growth and its undying promise, shown with superb photography and told with exciting text. The utilitarian waterwheel, the great days of the steam sawmill, and the epic courage of the schooner masters are told in all their glory. Ralph Andrews augments his careful and thorough research with anecdotes of the men who transformed logs into the building materials of a nation. The reader takes a step back in time, as the history of the industry which has gone on continuously since 1825 is brought to life....

Authors: BOB KEALING.
Hardcover, 264 pages
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Publication Date: 2008-05-25
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    ...

Authors: James Dyson.
Hardcover, 320 pages
Publisher: Texere
Publication Date: 2003-04-17
Edition: 2

Reviews :

    The inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner tells the story of his incredible struggle to design and launch a machine that worked better than all others.

When he brought his Dual Cyclone vacuum to market, manufacturers of traditional vacuums responded first with ridicule, then lawsuits, and finally with imitations. By 1997 Dyson's company was generating annual revenue of over £100 million per year in the United Kingdom, and sales of more than one billion dollars worldwide.

Dyson's freewheeling account of his struggles, failures and successes is interspersed with his unorthodox ideas on business, and his hard-won insights on how to turn an inspired idea into a household name. Against the Odds will inspire engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs and appeal to students around the world.

First published in the UK, this updated edition includes the latest on Dyson's legal and business battles to establish the Dual Cyclone vacuum worldwide, and includes the story of his most recent innovation, the 2-drum Dyson Contrarotator™ Washing Machine, and his launch into the US....

Authors: Don Graham.
Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2004-03-29
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    "A fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. It’s concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous, and very readable."–Larry McMurtry

In a sprawling, colorful family saga that takes us from border bandit skirmishes in the 1850s to boardroom battles in the 1990s, this acclaimed book tells the story of the fabled King Ranch in Texas, a Rhode Island—sized spread whose history inspired the movie Giant.

"The King Ranch doesn’t account for all of Texas, but even now, it speaks for all of Texas, and maybe for all of America."–Boston Globe

Don Graham (Austin, TX) is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine and a professor at the University of Texas. He is the author of No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy as well as several books about Texas life and culture....

Authors: Lincoln Caplan.
Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: 1994-10-30


Reviews :

    A revealing portrait of the rise of Skadden, Arps, Slate, and Flom, which became the world's most profitable law firm in the 1970s and 1980s, explores the culture of American law, offering fascinating insights about American business and American society. Reprint....

Authors: Chris Zook. James Allen. James Allen.
Hardcover, 194 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Publication Date: 2001-02
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Ninety percent of companies worldwide failed to achieve sustained, profitable growth over the past decade. While current business wisdom calls for "new rules" for strategy and organization, a breakthrough book reveals that the answer to the growth dilemma actually lies in basic, enduring economic principles.

Based on a sweeping ten-year study of more than two thousand technology, service, and product companies in a variety of industries, Profit from the Core argues that most growth strategies fail to deliver value-or even destroy it-primarily because they wrongly diversify from the core business. The authors contend that this timeless strategic precept-building market power in a well-defined core-remains the key source of competitive advantage and the most viable platform for successful expansion.

Drawing from hundreds of in-depth case studies, interviews with more than one hundred CEOs, and the authors' broad consulting and business experience, the book identifies and explains three key factors that differentiate growth strategies that succeed from those that fail: (1) reaching full potential in the core business; (2) expanding into logical adjacent businesses surrounding that core; and (3) preemptively redefining the core business in response to market turbulence.

The authors identify the classic problems that incumbents encounter in each of these areas and-borrowing lessons from private equity and start-up ventures-explain how to resolve them in today's rapidly changing business environment. The book concludes with guidelines for how companies can become sustained value creators-capable of successfully refining and revamping the core business over time.

Identifying enduring, often counterintuitive principles that fly in the face of new economy hype, Profit from the Core is an indispensable strategic guide to achieving long-term, profitable growth in any business.

...

    Spawned by a 10-year study of 2,000 firms conducted at Bain & Company, a global consultancy specializing in business strategy, Profit from the Core is based on the fundamental but oft-ignored maxim that prolonged corporate growth is most profitably achieved by concentrating on a single core business. To help companies identify this true essence, narrow their focus accordingly, and move forward in a manner that builds upon existing structure, Bain director Chris Zook and former Bain director James Allen present "a set of practical and proven principles, diagnostic tests, and questions for management teams to use as tools for reexamining or revising their strategies in search of the next wave of profitable growth." Bolstering their argument with real-world examples--including companies such as Disney, which succeeded by taking this approach, and Bausch & Lomb, which faltered by eschewing it--the authors show how to effectively uncover true corporate strengths, elevate them to realize their potential, identify related new businesses that could be successfully added, and even completely redefine a core when confronted with factors forcing such action. (For example: they offer a step-by-step method for mapping "adjacent opportunities" that may prove complementary, ranking them according to potential, and developing strategies to further evaluate and ultimately implement them.) The result is recommended for anyone tired of the management theory du jour who seeks a proven way to propel their company into the future. --Howard Rothman...

Authors: Paul Ingrassia. Joseph B. White.
Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 1995-10-18


Reviews :

    In Comeback, Pulitzer Prize-winners Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White take us to the boardrooms, the executive offices, and the shop floors of the auto business to reconstruct, in riveting detail, how America's premier industry stumbled, fell, and picked itself up again. The story begins in 1982, when Honda started building cars in Marysville, Ohio, and the entire U.S. car industry seemed to be on the brink of extinction. It ends just over a decade later, with a remarkable turn of the tables, as Japan's car industry falters and America's Big Three emerge as formidable global competitors.

Comeback is a story propelled by larger-than-life characters -- Lee Iacocca, Henry Ford II, Don Petersen, Roger Smith, among many others -- and their greed, pride, and sheer refusal to face facts. But it is also a story full of dedicated, unlikely heroes who struggled to make the Big Three change before it was too late....

Authors: Jerry Kaplan.
Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Publication Date: 1996-10-01


Reviews :

    In 1987, Jerry Kaplan embarked on every aspiring entrepreneur's dream--he formed his own company. Startup is Kaplan's riveting and insightful story about what it takes to create and maintain a company in he computer industry--and how to handle its remains when the world is not ready to accept what it proposes. This is both an inspiring personal account and a thrilling adventure story of what goes on behind the world of the computer screen....

    The founder of the visionary, yet doomed, GO Corporation kept notes throughout his years at the helm, thinking that one day he would produce a book. It shows. This is a vivid and lively rise-and-fall account of a company born to create a pen-based computer. It begins on a corporate jet with the author and fellow industry visionary Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus, sharing a vision of pen computing. From there, Startup quickly leaps to the day-to-day challenges of hiring staff, constantly reassessing and readjusting goals, and coping with the stress of endless rounds of venture capital funding. That Kaplan, in his first attempt at running a company, battles with the top forces at Microsoft, IBM, and other industry giants to bring the idea to market, only makes the story more compelling. His company's ultimate failure says more about a cutthroat industry than about the quality of Kaplan's product. This is a real David and Goliath tale. If you've ever wondered why things go right or wrong, how competition can kill you, or how financing really works within a small startup, read this book!...