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The Upside of the Downturn Ten Manage...
Brief Summary
Never waste a crisis.
Some businesses—and some people—will emerge from today’s economic tumult stronger and more dominant than when it started. Others will weaken and fade. It all depends on critical choices they make right now.
Geoff Colvin, one of America’s most respected business journalists, says even the scariest turbulence has an upside. The best managers know that conventional thinking won’t help them in tough times. They’re taking smart, practical steps—frequently unconventional and even counterintuitive—that will not only keep them strong, but will also distance them from the pack for years to come.
The dozens of top-performing leaders Colvin interviewed reject the common view that slashing costs and firing employ¬ees are the only effective tactics. They see volatility as a rich opportunity to reinvent their organizations and lay the ground-work for future growth.
Colvin shows us how these strategies really work, using examples of major companies that have successfully applied them.
ISBN:9781591842965
Author:Geoff Colvin
On Competition by Michael Porter
Brief Summary
For the past two decades, Michael Porter's work has towered over the field of competitive strategy. On Competition, Updated and Expanded Edition brings together more than a dozen of Porter's landmark articles from the Harvard Business Review. Five are new to this edition, including the 2008 update to his classic "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy," as well as new work on health care, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and CEO leadership.
This collection captures Porter's unique ability to bridge theory and practice. Each of the articles has not only shaped thinking, but also redefined the work of practitioners in its respective field. In an insightful new introduction, Porter relates each article to the whole of his thinking about competition and value creation, and traces how that thinking has deepened over time.
This collection is organized by topic, allowing the reader easy access to the wide range of Porter's work. Parts I and II present the frameworks for which Porter is best known--frameworks that address how companies, as well as nations and regions, gain and sustain competitive advantage. Part III shows how strategic thinking can address society's most pressing challenges, from environmental sustainability to improving health-care delivery. Part IV explores how both nonprofits and corporations can create value for society more effectively by applying strategy principles to philanthropy. Part V explores the link between strategy and leadership.
ISBN:9781422126967
Author:Michael Porter
Tough Calls from the Corner Office To...
Brief Summary
Fortune 500 executive Harlan Steinbaum collects the wisdom of America’s most successful business leaders in this powerful and inspiring guide to decision-making for your life and career.
Thirty-nine of America’s top executives, from ESPN’s Bill Rasmussen to United Airlines’ Gerald Greenwald, along with many other, relate the most important decisions of their careers, sharing why they struggled, how they decided, and what the lessons are they learned along the way—enabling you to achieve more, today.
ISBN:9780062041678
Author:Harlan Steinbaum, Michael Steinbaum and Dave Conti
The Breakthrough Imperative How the B...
Brief Summary
Every General Manager Today All The Way Up To The Ceo Is Expected By His Or Her Stakeholders To Achieve New Breakthroughs In Performance And Fast. Those Who Don’t Make Visible Progress Toward That Goal Within The First Year Or Two Will Likely Find Themselves Looking For Another Job.
It Is Precisely Because Of This Growing Breakthrough Imperative That Managers Today, Whether In Corporations Or Nonprofits, Need To Get Off To A Fast Start. They Don’t Have Time For Mistakes Or For Going Back And Redoing What They Should Have Done Right In The First Place.
But, Despite The Intensity Of These Pressures, Despite The High Expectations And Short Time Frames, A Number Of Ceos And General Managers Turn In Truly Exceptional Results. How Do They Meet and Exceed the Breakthrough Imperative? To Answer This Question, Consultants And Former Managers Mark Gottfredson And Steve Schaubert Interviewed More Than Forty Ceos From Both Industry And The Nonprofit Sector, Conducted An Intensive Study Of What Successful Managers Do Right And What Some Do Wrong And Drew On Their Own Combined Fifty-Plus Years Of Experience At Bain & Company, Where Their Insights Have Consistently Been Found In The Pages Of The Harvard Business Review. Together They Came Up With The Four Straightforward Principles Deceptively Simple Yet Remarkably Powerful That Everyone Must Follow To Succeed At Achieving Breakthrough Results:
• Costs and Prices Always Decline
• Competitive Position Determines Options
• Customers and Profit Pools Don’t Stand Still
• Simplicity Gets Results
Although Seemingly Simplistic, Mastering These Four Laws Means Mastering the Basics of Great Management a Foundation on Which to Build the Rest of One’s Management Strategy. Whether you’re Managing A Small Work Group Or A Multinational Corporation, A Single Division or an Entire Nonprofit, The Breakthrough Imperative Presents These Core Laws of Business to Help You Determine Where You Are, Just How Far You Can Go, and How to Get There with Stellar Results.
ISBN:9780061711480
Author:Mark Gottfredson and Steve Schaubert
All the Money in the World What the H...
Brief Summary
How happy would you be if you had all the money in the world? The universal lament about money is that there is never enough. We spend endless hours obsessing over our budgets and investments, trying to figure out ways to stretch every dollar. We try to follow the advice of money gurus and financial planners, then kick ourselves whenever we spend too much or save too little. For all of the stress and effort we put into every choice, why are most of us unhappy about our finances?
According to Laura Vanderkam, the key is to change your perspective. Instead of looking at money as a scarce resource, consider it a tool that you can use creatively to build a better life for yourself and the people you care about.
For instance, the average couple spends $5,000 on engagement and wedding rings, making these pricey purchases largely because everyone else does.
But what if you decided to spend $300 on rings and apply the rest to future date nights, weekend getaways, and thinking-of-you bouquets over the next ten years? In he long run, what would bring more joy to your marriage? Likewise, will owning a home with a pristine lawn and a two-car garage—the American Dream—really make you more satisfied? Or are you saving up for this investment just because financial planners tell you it’s worth it?
Vanderkam shows how each of us can figure out better ways to use what we have to build the lives we want. Drawing on the latest happiness research as well as the stories of dozens of real people, Vanderkam offers a contrarian approach that forces us to examine our own beliefs, goals, and values.
Among her advice:
Laugh at the Joneses: It’s human nature to compare yourself to those around you, but you can create lifestyle hat rings you personal satisfaction without copying your neighbors.
Give yourself the best weekend ever: Studies show that experiences often bring more pleasure than material goods. With a little planning and creativity, you can give yourself a memorable getaway without leaving town or going broke.
Embrace the selfish joy of giving: Giving back not only helps you build karma, it also helps you build a community—which is much more fulfilling than a tax deduction. All the Money in the World is a practical and inspiring guide that shows how money can buy happiness—if we spend it wisely.
ISBN:9781591844570
Author:Laura Vanderkam
Brand Sense Build Powerful Brands thr...
Brief Summary
That gratifying new car smell is actually a manufactured "new car" aroma. The sound of Kellogg's cornflakes crunching in our mouths is created in sound labs. Singapore Airlines has patented the smell in its cabins.
Branding has reached a new frontier. In the future brands will have to appeal to the neglected senses: touch, taste, and smell.
Branding expert Martin Lindstrom shows for the first time how it can be done. Drawing on the most extensive worldwide study ever conducted of the sensory perceptions of consumers, he shows how a two-sense product can become a five-sense phenomenon. This groundbreaking book provides innovative branding tools for evaluating where a brand is on the sensory scale, analyzing its sensory potential and giving it a clear pathway to optimize its sensory appeal.
Companies like Cadillac, Apple, Mercedes-Benz, Nokia, Louis Vuitton, Nestle and Disney have all recently adopted a sensory approach, and have seen their brands sizzle under this new direction. Anyone who wants a competitive edge can't afford to neglect this book. It's guaranteed to optimize the value of any marketer's budget in the most visionary way.
ISBN:9780743267847
Author:Martin Lindstrom
Forces for Good The Six Practices of ...
Brief Summary
An innovative guide to how great nonprofits achieve extraordinary social impact. What makes great nonprofits great? Authors Crutchfield and McLeod Grant searched for the answer over several years, employing a rigorous research methodology which derived from books on for-profits like Built to Last.
They studied 12 nonprofits that have achieved extraordinary levels of impact--from Habitat for Humanity to the Heritage Foundation--and distilled six counterintuitive practices that these organizations use to change the world. This book has lessons for all readers interested in creating significant social change, including nonprofit managers, donors and volunteers. Leslie R. Crutchfield (Washington, D.C.) is a managing director of Ashoka and research grantee of the Aspen Institute.
Heather McLeod Grant (Palo Alto, CA) is a nonprofit consultant and advisor to Duke University's Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship and the Stanford Center for Social Innovation. Crutchfield and Grant were co-founding editors of Who Cares, a national magazine reaching 50,000 readers in circulation between 1993-2000.
ISBN:9780787986124
Author:Leslie R Crutchfield
Losing the Signal The Untold Story Be...
Brief Summary
In 2009, BlackBerry controlled half of the smartphone market. Today that number is one percent. What went so wrong?
Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.
With unprecedented access to key players, senior executives, directors and competitors, Losing the Signal unveils the remarkable rise of a company that started above a bagel store in Ontario. At the heart of the story is an unlikely partnership between a visionary engineer, Mike Lazaridis, and an abrasive Harvard Business school grad, Jim Balsillie. Together, they engineered a pioneering pocket email device that became the tool of choice for presidents and CEOs.
The partnership enjoyed only a brief moment on top of the world, however. At the very moment BlackBerry was ranked the world's fastest growing company internal feuds and chaotic growth crippled the company as it faced its gravest test: Apple and Google's entry in to mobile phones.
Expertly told by acclaimed journalists, Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, this is an entertaining, whirlwind narrative that goes behind the scenes to reveal one of the most compelling business stories of the new century.
ISBN:9781250096067
Author:Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff
Making the Most of Your Money Now by ...
Brief Summary
Named the best personal finance book on the market by Consumers Union, Jane Bryant Quinn's bestseller Making the Most of Your Money has been completely revised and updated to provide a guide to financial recovery, independence, and success in the new economy.
Getting your financial life on track and keeping it there -- nothing is more important to your family and you. This proven, comprehensive guidebook steers you around the risks and helps you make smart and profitable decisions at every stage of your life. Are you single, married, or divorced? A parent with a paycheck or a parent at home? Getting your first job or well along in your career? Helping your kids in college or your parents in their older age? Planning for retirement? Already retired and worried about how to make your money last? You'll find ideas to help you build your financial security here.
Jane Bryant Quinn answers more questions more completely than any other personal-finance author on the market today. You'll reach for this book again and again as your life changes and new financial decisions arise. Here are just a few of the important subjects she examines:
• Setting priorities during and after a financial setback, and bouncing back
• Getting the most out of a bank while avoiding fees
• Credit card and debit card secrets that will save you money
• Family matters -- talking money before marriage and mediating claims during divorce
• Cutting the cost of student debt, and finding schools that will offer big "merit" scholarships to your child
• The simplest ways of pulling yourself out of debt
• Why it's so important to jump on the automatic-savings bandwagon
• Buying a house, selling one, or trying to rent your home when buyers aren't around
• Why credit scores are more important than ever, plus tips on keeping yours in the range most attractive to lenders
• Investing made easy -- mutual funds that are tailor-made for your future retirement
• What every investor needs to know about building wealth
• How an "investment policy" helps you make wise decisions in any market
• The essential tax-deferred retirement plans, from 401(k)s to Individual Retirement Accounts -- and how to manage them
• How to invest in real estate at a bargain price (and how to spot something that looks like a bargain but isn't)
• Eleven ways of keeping a steady income while you're retired, even after a stock market crash
• Financial planning -- what it means, how you do it, and where to find good planners
Page by page, Quinn leads you through the pros and cons of every decision, to help you make the choice that will suit you best. This is the single personal-finance book that no family should be without.
ISBN:9780743269964
Author:Jane Bryant Quinn
Managing at the Speed of Change How R...
Brief Summary
A source for anyone - from mid-level through to top-level executives - who needs to implement business decisions on time and within budget. The author illustrates that change needs to be made quickly, effectively, economically and with as little political fallout as possible.
His methods should teach today's managers to negotiate these transitions by teaching them what distinguishes resilient people from those who suffer future shock and why major change is difficult to assimilate.
It teaches the key elements and the flow of events involved in human transition; what roles are central to change in organizational settings; how people become committed to change; why organizational culture is so important to a change's success; and why teamwork is at the heart of achieving change objectives. Organizations need to start managing at the speed of change to meet today's challenges with confidence. The book is based on case studies from leading international organizations such as AT&T and Pepsi-Cola.
ISBN:9780471974949
Author:Daryl R. Conner
Market busters 40 Strategic Moves Tha...
Brief Summary
Robust methods to identify new growth opportunities
YOUR SHAREHOLDERS DEMAND growth; your company needs growth; and your career can suffer or soar because of how you drive growth—or don’t. While executives often talk about their great growth plans, very few of these plans actually deliver real gains in growth and profitability. How do some companies manage to beat the odds and bust through the obstacles that make explosive growth so elusive?
In this hands-on guide, Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan identify powerful strategic moves they call "MarketBusters”—approaches that dramatically reconfigure profit streams in an industry, upend conventional competition, and ultimately deliver blockbuster growth.
Based on insights from an extensive three-year study, McGrath and MacMillan describe forty proven marketbusting moves and outline five overall strategies companies have used to drive new growth:
• Change the customer’s total experience: Make it simpler, faster, or more beneficial for customers to buy from you
• Reconfigure your products and services: Transform your offerings to make them clearly superior to competitors’
• Redefine your business and associated key metrics: Change how you do business or how your customers do business in ways that dramatically boost performance
• Anticipate or exploit industry shifts: Capitalize on changes before competitors do
• Create a new market space: Trigger the emergence of a new market
Every marketbusting move is illustrated in practice through vivid company examples—including cautionary tales that alert you to potential pitfalls you may encounter. Action-oriented tools and checklists provide concrete guidance in finding opportunities across your own business platform, executing your chosen move successfully, and exploiting new opportunities to maximize their bottomline impact. The book also provides guidelines for avoiding common implementation challenges and for developing the organizational alignment needed to smooth execution.
New opportunities for explosive growth are waiting to be unleashed. MarketBusters is the field guide you need to develop a reliable, robust approach to fueling continuous, profitable growth.
ISBN:9781422171790
Author:Ian C MacMillan and Rita Gunther McGrath
The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Re...
Brief Summary
The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation: Creating, Protecting, and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset (Wall Street Journal Book).
From Enron and WorldCom to the Catholic Church and Major League Baseball, reputation crises have never been more widespread. Now Ronald J. Alsop, a veteran Wall Street Journal authority on branding and reputation management, explains the dangers -- and gives organizations the eighteen crucial laws to follow in developing and protecting their reputations. Consider this example of a simple decision made by a low-ranking employee: When rescue workers at the site of the World Trade Center disaster sought bottled water from a nearby Starbucks outlet, they complained that an employee charged them for it. In a matter of hours, the Internet had picked up the story and Starbucks' carefully cultivated worldwide reputation was quickly besmirched.
This is just one instance among many of how the business world, ever more global and competitive, has become increasingly difficult to navigate. Studies have demonstrated the powerful impact of reputation on profits and stock prices, and yet less than half of all companies have a formal system for measuring reputation. Clearly, companies in every industry -- from Dow Chemical to Disney to DaimlerChrystler -- have much more to learn.
It is still the rare company that realizes the full value of its reputation: how corporate reputation can enhance business in good times, become a protective halo in turbulent times, and be destroyed in an instant by people at the lowest or highest levels of the corporate ladder. Mr. Alsop provides eighteen thoroughly documented lessons based on years of experience covering every aspect of corporate reputation, with a clear distillation of the complex principles at the heart of a reputation. He explains:
• How to protect your reputation when the inevitable crisis hits
• How to cope with the many hazards in cyberspace
• How to create a reputation for vision and industry leadership
• How to establish a culture of ethical behavior
• How to measure and monitor your ever-changing public image
• How to make employees your reputation champions
• How to decide when it's time to change your name
The result is a book that is important not only for business executives, consultants, and advertising, public relations, and marketing professionals but also for anyone eager to learn more about the companies they work for, buy from, and invest in.
ISBN:9780743236706
Author:Ronald J. Alsop
Of pawns and players by Kinyanjui Kom...
Kinyanjui Kombani’s newest novel Of Pawns and Players is now available for pre-order. This is the third novel from the Nairobi, Kenya based author popularly known as the "banker who writes”.
Kinyanjui Kombani is a Kenyan novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, and literature activist. He burst onto the scene in 2004 with his debut novel The Last Villains of Molo one of the few pieces of art that have been produced about Kenya’s first post-election crisis in 1991. We loved it.
He followed in 2013 with Den of Inequities a book that follows a killer gang in Nairobi that we also loved.
Apart from fiction for adults, he wrote two books for children in 2007 Wangari Maathai: Mother of Trees a biography of Kenya’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai and We Can Be Friends: Theme, Spread of HIV/AIDS. He also wrote a Young Adult book called Finding Columbia which won the Burt Award for Young Adult Literature in Accra, Ghana last year.
The author’s new novel Of Pawns and Players tackles the underground world of betting in the simple and humorous narrative style that has made him a household name in contemporary fiction.
BMX Bike 4 – 6 Years
Baby Tricycle with two seats for 2 kids
Summa Mountain Bikes
The Defining Decade by Meg Jay
The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now.
Our "thirty-is-the-new-twenty" culture tells us that the twenty something years don't matter. Some say they are an extended adolescence. Others call them an emerging adulthood. But thirty is not the new twenty. In this enlightening book, Dr. Meg Jay reveals how many twenty something’s have been caught in a swirl of hype and misinformation that has trivialized what are actually the most defining years of adulthood.
Drawing from more than ten years of work with hundreds of twenty something clients and students, Dr. Jay weaves the science of the twenty something years with compelling, behind-closed-doors stories from twenty something’s themselves.
She shares what psychologists, sociologists, neurologists, reproductive specialists, human resources executives, and economists know about the unique power of our twenties and how they change our lives. The result is a provocative and sometimes poignant read that shows us why our twenties do matter. Our twenties are a time when the things we do--and the things we don't do--will have an enormous effect across years and even generations to come.
Story of Western Science From the Wri...
Brief Summary
Far too often, public discussion of science is carried out by journalists, voters, and politicians who have received their science secondhand. The Story of Western Science shows us the joy and importance of reading groundbreaking science writing for ourselves and guides us back to the masterpieces that have changed the way we think about our world, our cosmos, and ourselves.
Able to be referenced individually, or read together as the narrative of Western scientific development, the book's twenty-eight succinct chapters lead readers from the first science texts by Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle through twentieth-century classics in biology, physics, and cosmology. The Story of Western Science illuminates everything from mankind's earliest inquiries to the butterfly effect, from the birth of the scientific method to the rise of earth science and the flowering of modern biology.
Each chapter recommends one or more classic books and provides entertaining accounts of crucial contributions to science, vivid sketches of the scientist-writers, and clear explanations of the mechanics underlying each concept.
The Story of Western Science reveals science to be a dramatic undertaking practiced by some of history's most memorable characters. It reminds us that scientific inquiry is a human pursuit—an essential, often deeply personal, sometimes flawed, frequently brilliant way of understanding the world.
In the tradition of her perennial bestseller The-Well Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer delivers an accessible, entertaining, and illuminating springboard into the scientific education you never had.
ISBN:9780393243260
Author:Susan Wise Bauer
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by W...
The decisiveness of the short period of colonialism and its negative consequences for Africa spring mainly from the fact that Africa lost power. Power is the ultimate determinant in human society, being basic to the relations within any group and between groups.
It implies the ability to defend one's interests and if necessary to impose one’s will by any means available. In relations between peoples, the question of power determines maneuverability in bargaining, the extent to which a people survive as a physical and cultural entity.
When one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society that in itself is a form of underdevelopment.
Before a bomb ended his life in the summer of 1980, Walter Rodney had created a powerful legacy. This pivotal work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, had already brought a new perspective to the question of underdevelopment in Africa. his Marxist analysis went far beyond the heretofore accepted approach in the study of Third World underdevelopment.
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is an excellent introductory study for the student who wishes to better understand the dynamics of Africa’s contemporary relations with the West.
