Business

Brief Summary Capitalism in the Age of Globalization: The Management of Contemporary Society (Critique. Influence. Change.) Samir Amin is one of the world's most profound thinkers about the changing nature of capitalism, North-South relations and issues of development. Here he provides us with a powerful understanding of the new and very different era that capitalism has now entered with the collapse of the Soviet model, the triumph of unfettered market forces and accelerating globalization. His analysis spans the increasingly differentiated regions of the South and the former Eastern bloc countries, as well as Western Europe. He integrates his economic arguments about the nature of the crisis with political arguments based on his vision of human history not as simply determined by material realities, but as the product of social responses to those realities. His innovative analysis of the rise of ethnicity and fundamentalism as consequences of the failure of the ruling classes in the South to alter the unequal terms of globalization is particularly compelling, as is his deconstruction of the Bretton Woods institutions - notably the IMF and the World Bank - as managerial mechanisms protecting the profitability of capital. Looking to the longer term, Amin rejects a passive acceptance of the inevitability of globalization in its present polarizing form, or the simple-minded equation of development with expansion of the market. Instead, he argues for each society being allowed to negotiate the terms of its interdependence with the rest of the global economy in order that essential national developments can be pursued in a pluralistic world. ISBN:9781856494670 Author:Samir Amin

Brief Summary Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World. The New York Times bestselling author and social media expert returns with hard-won advice on how to connect with customers and beat the competition by mastering social media marketing When managers and marketers outline their social media strategies, they often plan for the "right hook"-their next highly anticipated sale or campaign that's going to put the competition out for the count. Even companies committed to jabbing-patiently engaging with customers to build the relationships so crucial to successful social media campaigns-still yearn to land the powerful, bruising swing that will knock out their opponent or their customer's resistance in one tooth-spritzing, killer blow. Right hooks, after all, convert traffic to sales. They easily show results and ROI. Except when they don't. In the same passionate, street-wise style readers have come to expect, Gary Vaynerchuk is on a mission to improve marketers' right hooks by changing the way they fight to make their customers happy, and ultimately to compete. Thanks to the massive change and proliferation in social media platforms in the last four years, the winning combination of jabs and right hooks is different now. Communication is still key, but context matters more than ever. It's not just about developing high-quality content, but developing high-quality content perfectly adapted to specific social media platforms and mobile devices-content tailor-made for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Tumblr. A mash-up of the best elements of Crush It! and The Thank You Economy with a 2013 spin, here is a blueprint to social media marketing strategies that really works. " ISBN:9780062273062 Author:Gary Vaynerchuk

Brief Summary The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimistand Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world. The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch—the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy, Matt Ridley’s wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high, whether in government, business, academia, or morality. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. Patterns emerge, trends evolve. Just as skeins of geese form Vs in the sky without meaning to, and termites build mud cathedrals without architects, so brains take shape without brain-makers, learning can happen without teaching and morality changes without a plan. Although we neglect, defy and ignore them, bottom-up trends shape the world. The growth of technology, the sanitation-driven health revolution, the quadrupling of farm yields so that more land can be released for nature—these were largely emergent phenomena, as were the Internet, the mobile phone revolution, and the rise of Asia. Ridley demolishes the arguments for design and effectively makes the case for evolution in the universe, morality, genes, the economy, culture, technology, the mind, personality, population, education, history, government, God, money, and the future. As compelling as it is controversial, authoritative as it is ambitious, Ridley’s stunning perspective will revolutionize the way we think about our world and how it works. ISBN:9780062296009 Author:Matt Ridley

Brief Summary Teach Your Team to Fish: Using Ancient Wisdom for Inspired Teamwork. Jesus Built an Inspired Team. You Can, Too. Laurie Beth Jones has given hundreds of thousands of business reader’s insight into how the ideas of Jesus can be used to enhance performance. In Teach Your Team to Fish, Jones focuses on one of the most critical areas for anyone in business: teamwork. Leaders today face their greatest challenges not only in defining strategies and getting updated information but also in getting diverse human beings to pull together without falling apart. Jesus is a role model for team leaders everywhere. Teach Your Team to Fish offers dozens of stories from the Bible, showing how Jesus managed his team of disciples and other followers, with suggestions for how to apply these lessons to real-world teambuilding and management problems. It offers guidance and inspiration on: • How to excite your team members in order to motivate them • How to ground them so they’ll be realistic about what can be achieved • How to transform them into a truly well-functioning team • How to release them into the world to improve teams elsewhere Laurie Beth Jones provides many examples of companies in which teams work well together and offers lessons that can help team leaders everywhere sustain themselves and achieve their common goals. ISBN:9781400053117 Author:Laurie Beth Jones

Brief Summary In 1971, President Nixon imposed national price controls and took the United States off the gold standard, an extreme measure intended to end an ongoing currency war that had destroyed faith in the U.S. dollar. Today we are engaged in a new currency war, and this time the consequences will be far worse than those that confronted Nixon. Currency wars are one of the most destructive and feared outcomes in international economics. At best, they offer the sorry spectacle of countries' stealing growth from their trading partners. At worst, they degenerate into sequential bouts of inflation, recession, retaliation, and sometimes actual violence. Left unchecked, the next currency war could lead to a crisis worse than the panic of 2008. Currency wars have happened before-twice in the last century alone-and they always end badly. Time and again, paper currencies have collapsed, assets have been frozen, gold has been confiscated, and capital controls have been imposed. And the next crash is overdue. Recent headlines about the debasement of the dollar, bailouts in Greece and Ireland, and Chinese currency manipulation are all indicators of the growing conflict. As James Rickards argues in Currency Wars, this is more than just a concern for economists and investors. The United States is facing serious threats to its national security, from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds. Greater than any single threat is the very real danger of the collapse of the dollar itself. Baffling to many observers is the rank failure of economists to foresee or prevent the economic catastrophes of recent years. Not only have their theories failed to prevent calamity, they are making the currency wars worse. The U. S. Federal Reserve has engaged in the greatest gamble in the history of finance, a sustained effort to stimulate the economy by printing money on a trillion-dollar scale. Its solutions present hidden new dangers while resolving none of the current dilemmas. While the outcome of the new currency war is not yet certain, some version of the worst-case scenario is almost inevitable if U.S. and world economic leaders fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. Rickards untangles the web of failed paradigms, wishful thinking, and arrogance driving current public policy and points the way toward a more informed and effective course of action. ISBN:9781591845560 Author:James Rickards

Brief Summary Revise your game plan and profit from the change. If you need the best practices and ideas for creating business models that drive growth--but don't have time to find them--this book is for you. Here are 10 inspiring and useful perspectives, all in one place. This collection of HBR articles will help you: • Reinvent your business profitably • Set your model up for success with a winning competitive strategy • Test and change your assumptions about customers • Spot trends that could transform your business • Exploit disruptive technologies • Give traditional offerings a shot in the arm • Produce game changers for your industry or market • Build a new business in an established organization ISBN:9781422162620 Author:Harvard Business Review