Authors: Madan Birla.
Hardcover, 215 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2005-06-15


Reviews :

    An inside look at leadership practices that enabled the world's leading shipping company to outthink and outperform its competition

Using firsthand accounts from top leaders at FedEx, FedEx Delivers explains how the company became an international powerhouse and one of the most trusted global brands by using leadership practices that tapped into the creativity and commitment of its employees.

Both a compelling business story and a prescription for business success, FedEx Delivers presents a model to show how these practices created and sustained an innovation culture. Readers will learn how to apply this model to their organizations for developing a culture of innovation that evolves with the times and offers fresh solutions to new challenges.

Innovative thinking and disciplined execution are what made FedEx a market leader, and they can help any business in any industry do the same. Each chapter covers a different aspect of innovation with real-life stories that highlight its effectiveness, and offers valuable ideas that lead managers through the process of implementing those practices.

By breaking innovation down to its three simplest steps-generation, acceptance, and implementation of ideas-and offering proven leadership practices that really work, FedEx Delivers offers unique insight and invaluable advice on building an organization that can adapt to any challenge and meet any goal in today's highly competitive global economy....

Authors: Tom Sant.
Hardcover, 224 pages
Publisher: AMACOM
Publication Date: 2006-03-27


Reviews :

    "The Giants of Sales" introduces readers to John Henry Patterson, Dale Carnegie, Joe Girard, and Elmer Wheeler - all true innovators of great salesmanship. The book presents the fascinating, time-tested techniques of these sales gurus, and demonstrates how they are still powerful tools salespeople should use today. Part history and part how-to, this unique book literally brings the sales strategies to life in the stories of the men who developed them - and changed the face of selling forever....

Authors: Paul Sloane.
Paperback, 183 pages
Publisher: Kogan Page
Publication Date: 2006-11-28
Edition: 2nd

Reviews :

    "No modern business leader should be unaware of these insights," Brian Mcbride, VP Northern Europe, Dell "Rocket fuel for the business brain," Bill Penn, CEO, Sparx Group In this lively, energetic guide to leadership, highly acclaimed author, trainer and presenter Paul Sloane shares dynamic techniques that are sure to unleash creative energy and lateral thinking. Packed with real-life examples, practical methods and lateral thinking exercises, the book encourages you to question your assumptions and develop new ideas with a variety of techniques. Lateral thinking puzzles at the end of each chapter illustrate the importance of thinking outside the box....

Authors: Patricia Aburdene.
Hardcover, 248 pages
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing
Publication Date: 2005-09-13


Reviews :

   

In Megatrends and Megatrends 2000, both number-one bestsellers, authors John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene predicted the shift from an industrial to an informational economy, the booming 1990s and the power of High Tech/ high touch. Today, information technology is a trillion-dollar sector.

Today's business world is undergoing massive change. As corporate scandals, the tech bubble and a mistrustful public compel business to demonstrate ethics, trust and integrity, a grassroots movement of CEOs, investors, consumers and "ordinary" managers are living the ideology of Conscious Capitalism.

Megatrends 2010 tells you how to capitalize on the changes ahead. Highly successful business leaders at all levels are themselves using a variety of consciousness transforming practices and encouraging their colleagues to affirm socially responsible values at work. As more people turn inward to embrace spirituality and values, leading-edge companies have discovered that social and environmental values enhance profit and productivity.

Once in a great while a book comes along that challenges conventional wisdom and opens the floodgates to the future. Megatrends 2010's blend of meaning, morals and bottom-line economics celebrates the demise of Business as Usual and the birth of Conscious Capitalism.

Megatrends 2010:

• Explains why firms like Timberland, Wainwright Bank, 3M, Chiquita Brands, Motorola, Intel and others are taking a stand for corporate social responsibility
• Shows that more than 63 million Conscious Consumers prefer to buy from companies who share or reflect their values and lifestyle
• Describes the surprising power of conscious techniques to enhance productivity
• Shows that socially responsible and green funds often outperform mainstream mutual funds
• Explores the New Economy of Consciousness and the quest for ethics in business within the legal confines of modern capitalism

...

Authors: Tiha von Ghyczy. Christopher Bassford.
Hardcover, 208 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2001-04-23
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Think about strategy and sharpen judgment in an unpredictable environment
Carl von Clausewitz is widely acknowledged as one of the most important of the major strategic theorists; he's been read by Eisenhower, Kissinger, Patton, Chairman Mao, and numerous other leaders. In Clausewitz on Strategy, the Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Institute has excerpted those passages most relevant to business strategy from Clausewitz's classic text On War, the most general, applicable, and enduring work of strategy in the modern West and a source of insight into the nature of conflict, whether on the battlefield or in the boardroom. This book offers Clausewitz's framework for self-education--a way to train the reader's thinking. Clausewitz speaks the mind of the executive, revealing logic that those interested in strategic thinking and practice will find invaluable. He presents unique ideas, such as the idea that friction--unexpected interference--is an intrinsic part of strategy.
The Boston Consulting Group is one of the world's leading management consulting firms whose clients include many of the world's industry leaders. Tiha von Ghyczy (Charlottesville, VA) has been a faculty member and Director of Business Projects at the Darden School of Business since 1996. While with The Boston Consulting Group, he assumed responsibility for the practice groups in manufacturing/time-based competition and high technology. He has published numerous articles and books on vision and strategy. Bolko von Oetinger (Munich, Germany) is a Senior Vice President of BCG. Christopher Bassford (Washington, DC) is presently a Professor of Strategy at the National War College in Washington, DC, and the author of several books, including Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815-1945....

    Carl von Clausewitz was a 19th-century Prussian general and is considered by many to be the millennium's preeminent strategist. Clausewitz on Strategy is a newly translated collection of sections from Clausewitz's classic work On War that's aimed at helping 21st-century executives and entrepreneurs grapple with the unpredictability of today's business climate. The Strategy Institute of The Boston Consulting Group, which pens an insightful essay introducing and connecting Clausewitz's thinking to the realities of today's business environment and which also supplements the book with historical notes and excerpts, thinks Clausewitz is cool. After reading this book, you may think so as well. --Harry C. Edwards...

Authors: Gregory Dess. G.T. (Tom) Lumpkin. Alan Eisner.
Hardcover, 944 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Publication Date: 2007-10-31
Edition: 4

Reviews :

    Strategic Management: Text and Cases, 4th Edition, by the prestigious authors Dess/Lumpkin/Eisner provide solid treatment of traditional topics in strategic management as well as thorough coverage of contemporary topics such as digital And internet strategies, innovation And corporate entrepreneurship, knowledge management, and intellectual assets. The text is rounded off by rich, relevant, and teachable cases. This text�s accessible writing style and wealth of new and updated illustrations, which clarify the most difficult topics, make this text the best resource for your students.
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.
• The new case selections emphasize variety, currency, and familiar company names. The cases are up-to-date in terms of both financial data and strategic issues. This group of cases gives both instructors and students unparalleled quality and variety. Based on consistent reviewer feedback, these selections combine comprehensive and shorter length cases about well known companies..

....

Authors: Jack Trout.
Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Publication Date: 2000-12-30
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Renowned marketing expert and best-selling author Jack Trout has a message for managers who are struggling to keep up with today’s ever-changing business climate: “Keep It Simple.” In this paperback edition of The Power of Simplicity, Trout advocates the importance of paying attention to the basics and simplifying processes in order to stay focused on the core business at hand. Through case studies and interviews with successful executives, he shows managers how to cut through jargon, articulate their vision, and regain control of the vital elements of their business in order to make it thrive. According to Trout, the things that propose to streamline companies, like the ubiquitous “mission statements,” often end up bogging down operations by introducing unnecessary complexity where a straightforward approach may be more effective. Trout cites Southwest Airlines, Intel, and Kohl’s department stores among others as successful companies that have rejected showy trappings in favor of simplification....

    Contending that our increasingly complicated corporate universe has made it more difficult for companies to grow and prosper, noted business strategist Jack Trout and communications consultant Steve Rivkin have proposed a radical new tack: simplicity. By boiling everything down to its essential elements, they maintain, managers can ignore new fads and hot consultants and instead focus on the true business at hand. Fascinating in its own unpretentious, logical manner, The Power of Simplicity is their stripped-down guide to a future without chaos and disorder. Addressing the basics involved as well as specific management, leadership, and people issues, they hit a variety of applicable themes--including information, competitors, mission statements, goals, and motivation--using short individual chapters that quickly get to the heart of the matter with a few germane anecdotes and expert quotes followed by suggestions that are both coherent and feasible. Each begins with an inspirational epigram by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Malcolm Forbes, and even Mother Goose, and concludes with a Simple Summation, such as this one on strategy: "If you're not different, you'd better have a lower price." --Howard Rothman...

Authors: Ronald S. Burt.
Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Publication Date: 2007-10-11


Reviews :

    Almost everything that happens in a firm flows through informal networks builts by advice, coordination, cooperation, friendship, gossip, knowledge, and trust. In this book, Ron Burt builds upon his celebrated work on network analyses to explain how these informal networks functions and the role of network entrepreneurs who have amassed social capital. Burt shows that social capital is a critical element in business strategy. Who has it, how it works and how to develop it have become key questions as markets, organizations and careers become more and more dependent on informal discretionary relationships. Informal relations have always mattered. What is new is the range of activities in which they now matter, and the emerging clarity we have about how they create advantage for certain people at the expense of others. This advantage is created by brokerage and closure. Brokerage is the activity of people who live at the intersecting of social worlds, who can see and develop good ideas. Closure is the tightening of coordination on a closed network of people. Brokerage and Closure explores how these elements work together to define social capital, showing how in the business world reputation has come to replace authority and reward has come to be associated with achieving competitive advantage in a social order of continuous disequilibrium....

Authors: Chi Liu.
Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Westview Press
Publication Date: 1998-05-14


Reviews :

    ...

Authors: Tom McNichol.
Hardcover, 208 pages
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Publication Date: 2006-09-18


Reviews :

    AC/DC tells the little-known story of how Thomas Edison wrongly bet in the fierce war between supporters of alternating current and direct current. The savagery of this electrical battle can hardly be imagined today. The showdown between AC and DC began as a rather straightforward conflict between technical standards, a battle of competing methods to deliver essentially the same product, electricity. But the skirmish soon metastasized into something bigger and darker. In the AC/DC battle, the worst aspects of human nature somehow got caught up in the wires; a silent, deadly flow of arrogance, vanity, and cruelty. Following the path of least resistance, the war of currents soon settled around that most primal of human emotions: fear. AC/DC serves as an object lesson in bad business strategy and poor decision making. Edison's inability to see his mistake was a key factor in his loss of control over the operating system for his future inventions–not to mention the company he founded, General Electric....