A compelling vision. Bold leadership. Decisive action.Unfortunately, these prerequisites of success are almost always theingredients of failure, too. In fact, most managers seeking tomaximize their chances for glory are often unwittingly settingthemselves up for ruin. The sad truth is that most companies haveleft their futures almost entirely to chance, and don’t evenrealize it. The reason? Managers feel they must make choices withfar-reaching consequences today, but must base those choices onassumptions about a future they cannot predict. It is thiscollision between commitment and uncertainty that creates THESTRATEGY PARADOX. This paradox sets up a ubiquitous but little-understood tradeoff.Because managers feel they must base their strategies onassumptions about an unknown future, the more ambitious of themhope their guesses will be right – or that they can somehow adaptto the turbulence that will arise. In fact, only a small number oflucky daredevils prosper, while many more unfortunate, bu

Named one of the Best Business Books of 1997 by BusinessWeek , Inside Intel is the gripping business saga of acompany that rose to dominance through technological innovation,and maintained its leadership against competitors throughaggressive marketing, tough business tactics, and liberal use oflegal firepower. In his in-depth portrait of Intel, the firsthistory/expose of the company, Financial Times columnist Tim Jackson reveals that: * Intel's corporate culture isdeterminedly secretive and authoritarian. * The company retains itsown force of private investigators to prevent its employees fromgoing astray. * Intel routinely uses the threat of lawsuits againstworkers and rivals. At the center of this story is AndyGrove , Intel's high-profile CEO and chairman, once a pennilessimmigrant who waited tables to put himself through college. It isGrove who has made the unpopular decisions which have kept Intel atthe top of the chip market. Exhaustively researched from courtrecords, unpublished documents,

From one of America's foremost economic and political thinkerscomes a vital analysis of our new hypercompetitive andturbo-charged global economy and the effect it is having onAmerican democracy. With his customary wit and insight, Reich showshow widening inequality of income and wealth, heightened jobinsecurity, and corporate corruption are merely the logical resultsof a system in which politicians are more beholden to the influenceof business lobbyists than to the voters who elected them. Powerful andthought-provoking, Supercapitalism argues that a clearseparation of politics and capitalism will foster an enviroment inwhich both business and government thrive, by putting capitalism inthe service of democracy, and not the other way around.

Knowledge has become the most important factor in economiclife. It is the chief ingredient of what we buy and sell, the rawmaterial with which we work. Intellectual capital--not naturalresources, machinery, or even financial capital--has become the oneindispensable asset of corporations. Intellectual Capital is a groundbreaking book, visionaryin scope and practical in applications, that offers powerful newways of looking at what companies do and how to lead them. It isthe first book to show how to turn the untapped, unmapped knowledgeof an organization into its greatest competitive weapon. Intellectual Capital cuts through the vague rhetoric of"paradigm shifts" to show how the Information Age economy reallyworks--and how to make it work for you and your business. Readerswill learn how to discover and map the human, structural, andcustomer capital that embody the knowledge assets of a corporation;how successful companies manage their intellectual capital toimprove performance; how intellectual capital

Book De*ion A new 21st century individualism is overtaking“corporation-as-king” capitalism, transforming the way we work andlive. Today, real power rests in the hands of creative individualslike Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, and StevenSpielberg, who are changing the world one great idea at a time. InTHE 80/20 INDIVIDUAL, Richard Koch reveals the secret of theirsuccess: they discovered what they do better than anyone else androde it for all its worth. In this inspiring sequel to his classic bestseller THE 80/20PRINCIPLE, Koch shows how to maximize success in your career andlife by using the proven principle that 80 percent of changes inthe world result from the most powerful 20 percent of actions andideas. He’ll show how to use your own powerful “20 percent spike” –your most creative ideas and unique skills – to measure the amountof value you bring to your employer, clients or customers. For mostpeople, there is a huge disparity between their intrinsic value andth

In Shift, Carlos Ghosn, the brilliant, audacious, and widelyadmired CEO of Nissan, recounts how he took the reins of the nearlybankrupt Japanese automotive company and achieved one of the mostremarkable turnarounds in automotive—and corporate—history. When Carlos Ghosn (pronounced like “phone”) was named COO ofNissan in 1999, the company was running out of gas and careeningtoward bankruptcy. Eighteen short months later, Nissan was back inthe black, and within several more years it had become the mostprofitable large automobile company in the world. In Shift, Ghosndescribes how he went about accomplishing the seemingly impossible,transforming Nissan once again into a powerful global automotivemanufacturer. The Brazilian-born, French-educated son of Lebanese parents,Ghosn first learned the management principles and practices thatwould shape his decisions at Nissan while rising through the ranksat Michelin and Renault. Upon his arrival at Nissan, Ghosn beganhis new position by embarkin

The legitimate use of force is generally presumed to be therealm of the state. However, the flourishing role of the privatesector in security over the last twenty years has brought this intoquestion. In this book Deborah Avant examines the privatization ofsecurity and its impact on the control of force. She describes thegrowth of private security companies, explains how the industryworks, and describes its range of customers – including states,non-government organisations and commercial transnationalcorporations. She charts the inevitable trade-offs that the marketfor force imposes on the states, firms and people wishing tocontrol it, suggests a new way to think about the control of force,and offers a model of institutional analysis that draws on botheconomic and sociological reasoning. The book contains case studiesdrawn from the US and Europe as well as Africa and the MiddleEast.

The bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership now brings us EcologicalIntelligence —revealing the hidden environmental consequences ofwhat we make and buy, and how with that knowledge we can drive theessential changes we all must make to save our planet andourselves. We buy “herbal” shampoos that contain industrial chemicals thatcan threaten our health or contaminate the environment. We divedown to see coral reefs, not realizing that an ingredient in oursunscreen feeds a virus that kills the reef. We wear organic cottont-shirts, but don’t know that its dyes may put factory workers atrisk for leukemia. In Ecological Intelligence , DanielGoleman reveals why so many of the products that are labeled greenare a “mirage,” and illuminates our wild inconsistencies inresponse to the ecological crisis. Drawing on cutting-edge research, Goleman explains why we asshoppers are in the dark over the hidden impacts of the goods andservices we make and consume, vict

A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principalcharacteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact;and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appearless random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishingsuccess of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For NassimNicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about ourworld, from the rise of religions to events in our own personallives. Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans untilafter they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is thathumans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focusedon generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and timeand time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know.We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, toovulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, andnot open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the“impossible.” For years, Taleb has studi

In this updated paperback edition of a "rich, readable, andauthoritative" Fortune) book, Wall Street Journal reporterPetzinger tells the dramatic story of how a dozen men, includingRobert Crandall of American Airlines, Frank Borman of Eastern, andRichard Ferris of United, battled for control of the world'sairlines Radio drive-time pubilcity.

American capitalism is in dire straits, caught in a perilouspattern of increasing volatility, decreasing investor returns, andongoing bad behavior by executives. And it's getting worse. Sincethe turn of the twenty-first century, we've seen two massivevalue-destroying market meltdowns and a string of ethics breaches,including accounting scandals, options-backdating schemes, and thesubprime mortgage debacle. Just what is going on here? Is it theinevitable decline of the American economy? Is it the new normal ina technology-enabled global marketplace? Or is it possible that thevery theories we've embraced to underpin our capital markets areactually producing these crises? In "Fixing the Game", Roger Martinreveals the culprit behind the sorry state of American capitalism:our deep and abiding commitment to the idea that the purpose of thefirm is to maximize shareholder value. This theory has led to amassive growth in stock-based compensation for executives and,through this, to a naive and wrongheaded linkin

“I’ve got the name for our publishing operation. We justsaid we were going to publish a few books on the side at random.Let’s call it Random House.” So recounts Bennett Cerf in thiswonderfully amusing memoir of the making of a great publishinghouse. An incomparable raconteur, possessed of an irrepressible witand an abiding love of books and authors, Cerf brilliantly evokesthe heady days of Random House’s first decades. Part of the vanguard of young New York publishers whorevolutionized the book business in the 1920s and ’30s, Cerf helpedusher in publishing’s golden age. Cerf was a true personality,whose other pursuits (columnist, anthologist, author, lecturer,radio host, collector of jokes and anecdotes, perennial judge ofthe Miss America pageant, and panelist on What’s My Line? )helped shape his reputation as a man of boundless energy andenthusiasm and brought unprecedented attention to his company andto his authors. At once a rare behind-the-scenes account of bookpublishing and

The companion to the blockbuster bestseller, Getting Things Done . Since its publication in 2001, Getting ThingsDone has become, as Time magazine put it, "the definingself-help business book" of the decade. Having inspired millions ofreaders around the world, it clearly spoke to an urgent need in anincreasingly time-pressured society. Now, in the highly anticipatedsequel Making It All Work , Allen unlocks the full power ofhis methods across the entire span of life and work. WhileGetting Things Done functioned as an essential tool kit, Making It All Work is an invaluable road map, providing bothbearings to help you determine where you are in life and directionson how to get to where you want to go.

Tradition says there are three ways to grow a company’sprofits: Fire up the sales team with empty promises, cut costs anddownsize, or cook the books. But what if there’s a better way—a waythat nine amazingly profitable and well-run companies are alreadyembracing? Jason Jennings and his research team screened more than100,000 Amer?ican companies to find nine that rarely end up onmagazine covers, yet have increased revenues and profits by tenpercent or more for ten consecutive years. Then they interviewedthe leaders, workers, and customers of these quiet super?stars tofind the secrets of their astoundingly consistent and profitablegrowth. What they have in common is a culture—a community—based on ashockingly simple precept: Think big, but act small. It works forretailers like PETCO, Cabela’s, and O’Reilly Automotive,manufacturers like Medline Industries, service compa?nies likeSonic Drive-In, private educational companies like Strayer,industrial giants like Koch Enterprises, a

Cathie Black is the wise, funny mentor that every woman dreamsof having. She was a pioneer in advertising sales at a time whenwomen didn’t sell; served as president and publisher of thefledgling USA Today ; and, in her current position as thepresident of Hearst Magazines, persuaded Oprah to launch amagazine. In 2006 she was named one of Fortune’s “50 Most PowerfulWomen in American Business” for the seventh consecutive year. Now,in the exuberant, down-to-earth voice that is her trademark, Cathieexplains how she achieved “the 360° life”—a blend of professionalaccomplishment and personal contentment—and how any woman can seizeopportunity in the workplace. No matter where you are in your career, Basic Black offersinvaluable lessons that will help you land the job, promotion, orproject you’re vying for. At the core of the book are Cathie’scandid, personal stories. She walks us through her decision to riskdropping a huge ad agency that handled the USA Today campaign in favor of a small bo

Customize your delivery for maximum persuasive power. If you need the best practices and ideas for communicatingeffectively--but don't have time to find them--this book is foryou. Here are 10 inspiring and useful perspectives, all in oneplace. This collection of HBR articles will help you: - Pitch your brilliant idea successfully - Connect with your audience - Establish credibility - Inspire others to realize your vision - Adapt to your listeners' decision-making styles - Frame goals around common interests - Build consensus and win concessions - Neutralize stressful conversations

Business revolves around making decisions, often riskydecisions, usually with incomplete information and too often inless time than we need. Executives at every level, in everyindustry, are confronted with information overload, less leeway formistakes, and a business environment that changes rapidly. In lightof this increased pressure and volatility, the old-fashioned waysof making decisions–depending on intuition, common sense, andspecialized expertise–are simply no longer sufficient. Distillingover thirty years of groundbreaking research, WinningDecisions , written by two seasoned business advisers and worldleaders in behavioral decision studies, is a comprehensive,one-of-a-kind guide to the proven methods of making criticalbusiness decisions confidently, quickly–and correctly. Decision-making is a business skill which managers often take forgranted in themselves and others–but it's not as easy as some mightthink. The authors, whose expertise has been sought out by over ahundred companies, includi

The little black book of marketing is here. Marketing guru Peter Fisk's inspirational manual of marketing shows you how to inject marketing genius into your business to stand out from the crowd and deliver exceptional results. Marketing Genius is about achieving genius in your business and its markets, through your everyday decisions and actions. It combines the deep intelligence and radical creativity required to make sense of, and stand out in today's markets. It applies the genius of Einstein and Picasso to the challenges of marketing, brands and innovation, to deliver exceptional impact in the market and on the bottom line. Marketers need new ways of thinking and more radical creativity. Here you will learn from some of the world's most innovative brands and marketers from Alessi to Zara, Jones Soda to Jet Blue, Google to Innocent. Peter Fisk is a highly experienced marketer. He spent many years working for the likes of British Airways and American Express, Coca Cola and Microsoft. He was the CEO of

Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

"As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater goodby bringing people and resources together to create value that nosingle individual can create alone..." So begins the MBA Oath, conceived in early 2009 byMax Anderson, Peter Escher, and a team of Harvard Business Schoolstudents. They saw that in the wake of the financial crisis, theMadoff scandal, and other headlines, MBAs were being vilified.People were angry because business leaders, many of whom were MBAs,seemed not to care about anything beyond their own privateinterests. Many began to question the worth of business schools andthe MBA degree. The oath quickly spread beyond Harvard, becoming a worldwidemovement for a new generation of leaders who care about society aswell as the bottom line. Thousands of graduating MBAs have nowpledged to conduct themselves with honesty and integrity, just asmedical students swear by the Hippocratic oath before they canpractice. This book is the manifesto for the movement. It provides not only astrong case for wh