Business

Brief Summary What if you could sit down with some of the world's most influential entrepreneurs and gain their knowledge and insights on how to create a game changing business? Imagine having the chance to listen to a John Mackey (Whole Foods) or a Fred Smith (FedEx) on the most important things they've learned from their experiences. Or having the benefit of the self-reflection of Howard Schultz of Starbucks, who had to come back to the company he originally built to reinvent it and himself? Of course it's not possible to deliver these rock star entrepreneurs to your dinner table. But John A. Byrne offers the next best thing: he spoke with many who have changed the face of business. In World Changers he captures the most important lessons they've learned, the biggest challenges they've tackled, and the most valuable advice they can offer others who have an entrepreneurial dream. You'll learn the inspiring stories of how these world changers discovered their disruptive ideas, then made them a reality; overcame a variety of obstacles; and created sustainable enterprises. You'll get the firsthand accounts of how: • Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank got the confidence to start The Home Depot after being fired from their jobs. • Reed Hastings turned a forty-dollar video late fee into a disruptive upstart called Netflix. • Herb Kohler, the "reluctant prince of porcelain," came back to the family business and made it number one in its industry again. • Narayana Murthy, after one fateful train ride and wrongful incarceration, converted from communist to capitalist and cofounded one of the most successful entrepreneurial ventures in India. World Changers is an inspiration for those who want to create something meaningful on their own. It serves as both a celebration of entrepreneurial achievement as well as a practical handbook for everyone who dreams of starting his or her own world-changing business. ISBN:9781591844501 Author:John A. Byrne

Brief Summary The Creative Priority: Driving Innovative Business in the Real World How does your company define creativity? Or does creativity define your company? In this remarkable book, Jerry Hirshberg, founder and president of Nissan Design International (NDI), distills his experience as leader of the world's hotbed of automotive innovation and reveals his strategy for designing an organization around creativity. Rather than championing the traditional treatment of creativity as a vital component in business, Hirshberg shows how creativity can become the fundamental organizing principle of business. "Business," Hirshberg writes in the introduction, "begins with an idea. And as never before, its growth, stability and ultimate success depend upon innovation and a continuing flow of imaginative thought. Throughout this book I will maintain that the most urgent business of business is ideas." Yet, Hirshberg claims, business has never been more poorly suited for stimulating original ideas. "Current organizational models revolving around productivity and efficiency at any cost produce a corporate culture hardly conducive to thinking -- much less innovative thinking." In The Creative Priority, Hirshberg describes how NDI produced a culture that fostered innovation, enabling his team to produce such cutting-edge designs as Nissan's Altima, Pathfinder, Quest and Maxima; Ford's Villager; and Infiniti's J30. Hirshberg weaves together enlightening real-world anecdotes with the story of NDI's genesis to illustrate 11 interlocking strategies that came to define NDI's creative priority. The strategies are arranged according to four principles: 1. Polarity: Typically seen as an obstacle to creative thinking, the friction that exists among individuals or systems of thought can be harnessed to generate original ideas. 2. Unprecedented Thinking: The Nissan Altima materialized after Hirshberg's entire company played hooky midday to see the opening of The Silence of the Lambs. Imagining a new idea into existence requires both stubborn determination and a childlike openness to serendipity. 3. Beyond the Edges: Many of the strategies for fostering creativity loose us from our moorings and blur the boundaries between traditionally distinct disciplines. 4. Synthesis: All too often corporations set creative activity apart from the rest of the organization. Far from being a romantic escape from disciplined thinking, genuine creative thought should be an imaginative escape with disciplined thinking. 5. Richly illustrated with NDI's elegant designs and sketches, The Creative Priority is at once a compelling narrative, a rich store of hands-on experience and a grab bag of breakthrough insights that can help your business perform its most important function. ISBN:9780887308307 Author:Jerry Hirshberg

Brief Summary Creative Disruption: What You Need to Do to Shake Up Your Business in a Digital World There's been a change in the rules. Digital technologies are having a profound effect on business and industry. They've ripped up traditional business models and have created both opportunities and challenges for businesses in the 21st century. What are you going to do? How will you ensure your business not only survives, but thrives on the digital revolution? In Creative Disruption, Simon Waldman shows you how new businesses and new entrepreneurs have emerged, and how they've capitalized on the new physics of business. Looking at businesses that have faced these challenges, such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, Kodak, IBM, HMV and the turnaround of Apple, he explains why you need to have a strategy and how to make sure you have a sustained process of re-invention. This change isn't going to be quick and it isn't going to be easy. But if you want your company to survive, you have no alternative. What is creative disruption? What does it mean for the business world? How is the digital world going to change what you do? In this accessible and highly engaging book, Simon Waldman gives you the stories of what's worked, and tells the tales of those things that failed. Explaining why this big problem needs big solutions, he'll show you what your company needs to do, to survive: Transform your core business Find big adjacencies Innovate at the edges Defining the problem is helpful, but, solving it is what counts. Creative Disruption will help you do just that. ISBN:9780273725732 Author:Simon Waldman

Brief Summary Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business Why does Procter & Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStockphoto and Thread less employ just a handful of people, yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year? "Crowdsourcing" is how the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the responsibility of a specialized few. Jeff Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise–it’s talented, creative, and stunningly productive. It’s also a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education, and job history no longer matter; the quality of the work is all that counts. If you can perform the service, design the product, or solve the problem, you’ve got the job. But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent is employed, research is conducted, and products are made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable, and Howe delves into both the positive and negative consequences of this intriguing phenomenon. Through extensive reporting from the front lines of this workplace revolution, he employs a brilliant array of stories to look at the economic, cultural, business, and political implications of crowdsourcing. ISBN:9780307396211 Author:Jeff Howe

Brief Summary Taking a managerial perspective on the field of public relations, this book explores PR and its role in the wider organizational world. Contributors explore a variety of contexts in which the relevance of understanding these two interlinking domains is so paramount, such as corporate branding and reputation, government relations and community communications, as well as drawing on expertise of legal considerations and ethical awareness. The range of PR and corporate communications within any organization is critical and a managerial awareness of this is all the more important. In providing a framework and examination of the issues, Public Relations: A Managerial Perspective offers an original and vital discussion. ISBN:9780761948575 Author:Danny Moss and Barbara DeSanto