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BUSINESS
Overall a B- book; for start-ups and e-companies I'd upgrade it to a B. Good advice, and practical advice from a former top executive at two main e-companies. The stress is on speed and being smart. The advice is good for growing businesses and industries but once you've gotten past that then alot of the advice here is okay at best but can be counterproductive at worst. Not to say that everything here is only for start-ups and e-companies. Just alot of it.
All managers today are Internet managers, whether they’re ready to admit it or not. It doesn’t matter if their business is large or small, old economy or new. In a faster, electronic, and more direct economy, every manager needs help. And here it is. The 10-Second Internet Manager offers quick, no-nonsense tips, tactics, and strategies for succeeding fast in the Internet age from Mark Breier, an on-line expert willing to share the practical lessons he learned as an executive on the front lines of the e-commerce wars.
The 10-Second Internet Manager will show you how to improve productivity and accelerate growth. You’ll learn how to use e-mail to keep everyone connected (and when to get up from your desk and go have a talk); how to use the Internet to get a quick customer response to your product, your plan, or even your business model; how to build teams now and how to make sure they’re moving forward instead of just around; and how to make effective meetings produce results that contribute to your bottom line.
Best of all, Breier offers proven methods for finding, hiring, and keeping the best and fastest employees -- the ones who can make or break a manager’s efforts. And, for all those folks who are jumping into the deep end of the pool launching their own dot-com ventures -- Breier even offers advice on the care and feeding of venture capitalists and the joys of 24/7 exhaustion.
The One-Minute Manager changed the world by showing managers how to get the most out of a minute. But in an Internet-speed economy, who has a minute to spare? The 10-Second Internet Manager shows you how to launch your team or your company into the Internet age.
Order The 10 Second Internet Manager Hardcover from Amazon Today!
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Corporate Combat takes a look at how military strategy can be used as a model for business strategy. There are a lot of parallels between business competition and military combat. Many of which are well known, but there have been relatively few books that deal with direct comparisons between military and business strategy. This book does a good job at showing good business strategy for use against competition using military examples. The military parts are a little lacking but that is acceptable since you don't lose much and the focus is on business application. The business application of the strategies discussed are well done. I give this book a B.
{When Business is War, These are the rules of competitive strategy}
"War is capitalism with the gloves off" - Tom Stoppard
"War .. is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass ... but always the collision of living forces" - Karl von Clausewitz
In other words the competition always fights back ...
Just as military strategists concentrate on the enemy, so do successful business strategists who wan to win in the marketplace. Three lessons underpin success in warfare, and knowing and understanding this will enable you to determine which one of four strategies - fundamental to military success - will work for you and help you to beat the competition.
{The Three Lessons of Warfare: To triumph over the competition, you must possess: A SWAT (superior weapons and tactics system), A High Force: Space Ratio, A Strong Defensive Position}
{Applying the Four Strategies: All of history's great military campaigns successfully deployed one of four basic strategies: Head-To-Head Combat, Head-To-Head Logistics, Raiding Combat, Raiding Logistics}
Choosing which of these strategies to use, and when is essential for business success. Only then can you achieve and maintain your competitive advantage and thrive in any market no matter what your position or size.
Michael Porter meets Sun Tzu in this essential guide to beating the competition on the business battlefield.
The language of the military has long been an integral part of our business vernacular - we 'defend market share', 'go on the offensive' and use 'killer apps'. And we are all aware of the McDonald's vs Burger King "burger war', and the 'cola war' between Coke and Pepsi. But we could do no better than to look to actual military history and the way that battles have been fought and won over the past 2500 years to find ways of winning on the business battlefield.
Corporate Combat adds the historical context and modern business application to the "business is war' metaphor. It presents a fascinating interweaving of real military campaigns with actual business cases to demonstrate how millennia of military strategy can be used to build a competitive business strategy for the next century.
From the triumphs of the great Roman armies to the major battles of the American Civil War, from guerilla warfare in Indochina to the strategic genius of Alexander the Great, the author shows how to apply and adopt the actual strategies of centuries of military campaigns to your business in order to beat the competition.
In a book that will appeal to anyone involved in business strategy from mid - to top- management, Nick Skellon demonstrates that the three lessons of successful military operations - possession of an effective SWAT (superior weapons and tactics system), a high force-space ratio, and a strong defensive position - are directly transferable to a business seeking competitive advantage.
A thorough understanding of the lessons will enable an company, of any size, to determine which of four fundamental strategies is the most successful one to pursue. With examples from companies as diverse as Wal-Mart, Dyson, Microsoft and Honda, Nick Skellon shows that with the right strategy, deployed at the right time, your company can compete with the giants even though it may not be one, turn its competitors into followers and thrive in the competitive market.
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Using solid data collection and analysis the researchers identify 11 companies out of the stock market S&P 500 that have made the leap from good to great. Looking at those 11 companies it identifies what makes them different from the rest and how they were able to make the leap.
It finds five things that stand out. The author takes those five "principles" and describes them in the book and how they take a company from good to great. The thing that makes this book good is the strategies and how much they go against current thinking yet encompass the best parts of them and also a good chunk of common sense. You get to see examples of how the companies make the transition to greatness. The struggles they went through to get there and how they stuck to the principles to get to greatness. Also the fact that the author and researchers use actual research and findings to get the "principles" give the whole book added weight and viability. I give this book an A.
The ChallengeBuilt 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 very beginning.
But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?
The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?
The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.
The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?
Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness' why some companies make the leap and others don't.
The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.
“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”
Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
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The book is about going digital and not just adding more computers or going on-line but creating a whole digital business design for your company. It takes a look at how several business in different areas have gone digital and at different stages in the digital design of several business. I like that it doesn't preach that everything will work for everybody the same way and it stresses creating a good basic business design as the foundation for creating a good digital design. It sparks ideas and guidelines more than a cookbook approach. Good for the large IBM's to the storefront from dot.coms to mom and pops. I give it an A.
The biggest, most important issue in business today - becoming digital - touches not only traditional enterprises but the most avant-garde of Internet companies as well.
Old-economy companies must take steps to avoid becoming victims of capitalism's creative destruction, the unofficial system that flushes out the old to make way for the new. For dot-com companies the question is whether or not they are flash-in-the-pan businesses with no long-term prospects of profitability and customer loyalty.
Most of the early efforts to answer the question "How digital is your business?" have been shrouded in techno-speak: a veritable Tower f Babel unconnected with real needs of business. Slywotzky and Morrison show, first of all, that becoming digital is not about any of the following: having a great Web site, setting up a separate e-business, having next-generation software, or wiring your workforce.
What they so creatively demonstrate is that a digital business is one whose strategic options have been transformed - and significantly broadened - by the use of digital technologies. A digital business has strategic differentiation, a business model that creates and captures profits in new ways and develops powerful new value propositions for customers and talent. Above all, a digital business is one that is unique.
How Digital is Your Business? is a groundbreaking book with universal appeal for everyone in the business world. It offers:
While How Digital Is Your Business? has great stories and case studies, its most invaluable central idea is that of digital business design and the array of powerful digital tools it offers for use in creating a digital future for your own company.
Order How Digital Is Your Business : Creating the Company of the Future Hardcover from Amazon Today!
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This is a quick, basic book for starting an e-business or e-strategy. It's UK based but that doesn't take away from the usefulness for those based outside the UK. Each chapter is a quick covering of the main topic and usually an example. The author doesn't add a lot of commentary or overload the chapters with unnecessary information. Basic information for starting an e-business and things to look out for are the main part of the book. There's nothing ground breaking or even brilliant here but if you need a good overview of how to get an e-strategy started this is a good book to look at. I'd give it a B.
Are your competitors increasing their online activity? Are you facing new competition from Internet-based rivals? Are your customers window-shopping on the Web?
Despite all the media hype around the many misguided and ill-fated Internet ventures, more business is being conducted via the Web than ever before. Even in today's uncertain economic climate, e-commerce growth remains unfaltering. It's clear that whatever business you're in; whatever its size, ignoring the Internet is no longer possible. You need to have an e-strategy.
Cutting through all the usual rhetoric and technical jargon, this succinct guide takes you through the essential steps to using the Internet as a tool for competitive advantage and growth, covering:
You'll also find lots of real-life cases and candid comment from businesspeople around the world, along with a glossary of key terms so you can impress your colleagues with current e-speak.
Great Bargain Books @ chapters.indigo.ca
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This is the AT&T Solutions story in short. There are some guidelines and stuff of what they learned along the way, here's how you can use it, but the basic jist of the book is "the AT&T Solutions story". Not that there's nothing to learn from the story or that its a bad story, just that its one company's story of how they were leading at the speed of change. If you want to see how one company, that started out from a big corporation, breaking with the big corp's culture and how running like a new start up was able to reach the top then this is a good book for you. If you like AT&T Solutions and want to know how they did it, this is good. If you want advice from one of the top network solutions companies around this is good. If you want general or standards or theory/set of rules book on how to lead at the speed of change then this won't work for you.
Overall I liked the book. Watching AT&T Solutions rise to the top is fun and the inside interviews and perspectives give insight into what was going on and how they got there. The information is honest and forthright. The telling is not over-detailed nor too general. Personalities shine through as do corporate cultures. At the end of each chapter there's a nice little summary and questions to ask about your own company or way of doing things. So it is sort of instructional. Another thing I enjoyed was at the end where it talks of how once things grew it got more difficult and how it wasn't a magic fit for AT&T as a whole. Thus showing how just cause it worked for us this way doesn't mean .... I think most telling is that Rick Rocsitt, the guy who was in charge of AT&T Solutions, moved on to a new smaller start-up for new challenges.
I give this book a B. Not bad for what it is. Entertaining and instructional, if you know what you're looking for and what you've got.
Energize a traditional bricks-and-mortar company with lightning-fast e-business spirit -- and results Traditional brick-and-mortar companies' competitive survival in the New Economy depends on learning how to think, act, and perform like the most agile of today's light-speed, dotcom enterprises. Leading at the Speed of Change shows the way. Based on extensive interviews with key players, this book takes you behind the scenes to describe how one global giant, AT&T, has risen to the challenge.You'll learn how AT&T Solutions, under the direction of entrepreneurial superstar Rick Rocsitt, grew from a dream to a 5 billion enterprise in less than five years. A road map through today's exciting e-business revolution, this challenging, compelling landmark book serves up a template old-line companies can use to rethink, redesign, and reengineer their design processes, factory floors, supply chains, and distribution channels --and meet the changing demands and opportunities of the new Internet economy. Don't miss this guide's powerful lessons on how to infuse any organization with the spirit, creativity, swiftness, and growth of the best dotcom companies.
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A forward looking book that looks at and addresses some of the challenges facing management in the upcoming years. It makes you think and question which is always a good thing. Over I'd give the book an A-. There were a few minor things that placed it below an A.
Some of the ideas presented were sketchy, purposefully and necessarily so, that took away from the book. Also there was no real grab, i.e. something that grabbed your attention and forced you to read on. I enjoyed the book and the reading was comfortable and absolutely worth the time for anyone interested in staying on top of forthcoming management issues.
In his first major new book since Post-Capitalist Society Peter F. Drucker discusses the new paradigms of management - how they have changed and will continue to change our basic assumptions about the practices and principles of management. Drucker analyzes the new realities of strategy, shows how to be a leader in periods of change, and explains "the New Information Revolution," discussing the information an executive needs and the information an executive owes. He also examines knowledge worker productivity, and shows that changes in the basic attitude of individuals and organizations as well as structural changes in work itself are needed for increased productivity. Finally, Drucker addresses the ultimate challenge of managing yourself while still meeting the demands of the individual during a longer working life and in an ever-changing workplace.
Incisive, challenging, and mind-stretching, Drucker's new book is forward-looking and forward-thinking. It combines the broad knowledge, wide practical experience, profound insight, sharp analysis, and enlightened common sense that are the essence of drucker's writings, which are continuing international bestsellers and "landmarks of managerial profession"
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One of the hallmarks of Peter Drucker's expertise is his unique understanding of economics, people at work, the newest management concepts and practices and the ever evolving shape of corporate organization.
Here, in a brilliant new book, he brings clear-sighted analysis and practical inspiration to an arresting array of subjects: the end of the era of the blue-collar worker; the ultimate bankruptcy of the Keynesian theory of economic pump-priming by government; the myths about the Japanese economic juggernaut and the truths that we can and must learn from; the lessons that nonprofit enterprises offer big business; the place of a national economy in the multinational corporate world; the formula for excellence in American exports; the changing ethos of middle managers as the docile doctrine of absolute company loyalty gives way to the demand for rewards for individual achievement and initiative; and much more. Managing for the Future offers proof positive that the incomparable Peter Drucker remains at the peak of his extraordinary powers. This wide-ranging, future-oriented book is sure to be one of the most important and influential business books of the decade. Order Managing for the Future : The 1990s and Beyond paperback from Amazon Today!
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Even dated there is something to be learned from this book. Drucker is one of the few people who not only talks about the future of business but clarifies the present business climate. Even when he is wrong about what will happen, which he will be one of the first to say, he is smart enough to admit it and learn from it. Drucker gives solid practical advice and insight to all aspects of business. And more importantly what should be part of business. I give the book a B+ just because of it being dated.
From the Preface:
It is not so very difficult to predict the future. It is only pointless. Many futurologists have high batting averages--the way they measure themselves and are commonly measured. They do a good job of foretelling some things. But always far more important are the fundamental changes that happened though no one predicted them or could possibly have predicted them. Looking back ten years today, no one in 1985 predicted--or could have predicted--that the establishment of the European Economic Community would not release explosive economic growth in Europe but would, on the contrary, usher in a decade of economic stagnation and petty bickering. As a result, the United Europe of 1995 is actually weaker in the world economy than was the fractured Europe of 1985...But equally important, one cannot make decision for the future. Decisions are commitments to action. And actions are always in the present, and in the present only. But actions in the present are also the one and only way to make the future. Executives are paid to execute--that is, take effective action. That they can do only in contemplation of the present, and by exploiting the changes that have already happened...To enable today's executive to be ahead of this different tomorrow--indeed to make it their tomorrow--is the aim of this book.
From the inside cover:
No thinker in the world today understands the art and science of business and management better than Peter Drucker. His writings have set the standard of analysis and advice for a generation and more. As this major new book vividly demonstrates, he illuminates the cutting edge of business challenge in our era of high-pressure change.
Here is Peter Drucker at his most cogent and compelling, as he does what he does best: showing us what is rather than what is supposed to be in the ways businesses operate and should be run; examining current management trends and catchphrases to make clear what they really mean and if they really work, and providing vital perspective by placing business activity in the broader context of government, society, technology, and the world economy.
Among the essential topics that Drucker incisively examines are: The meaning and message of the Information Age. The implications for business in the reinvention of government. The shifting balance of power between management and labor. The widely differing kinds of teamwork that an organization can choose. The lessons we can learn from such case histories as the rise and fall and rise again of such corporate giants as IBM and General Motors. What the most important new jobs will be in the years and decades to come. Why data management has become the keystone of management success. The fading boundary lines between profit and nonprofit organizations. The questions of in-house work versus outsourcing. The delicate and decisive relationship between America and Japan. The promise and perils of China and other emerging powers on the Pacific rim.
Great Bargain Books @ chapters.indigo.ca
Order Managing in a Time of Great Change Paperback from Amazon Today!
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How do the Japanese do it? How do they manage to get there faster, better, and cheaper so often?
It's a question that has been asked again and again in recent years - and answered in various ways by various Japan-watchers, some of impeccable credentials. Yet somehow the puzzle continues to perplex American business executives. Explanations by Westerners are all very well, but they inevitably miss the core of the matter: how winning strategies actually take shape in the mind of the Japanese business strategist. It is that process, as observed and practiced by a uniquely qualified Japanese "insider" which is described for the first time in this remarkable book.
The Mind of the Strategist is neither a conventional formulas-for-success-in-business book nor another routine sociological analysis of the Japanese approach to life and business. It is a close-up, real-life look at the art of strategic thinking by Japan's best-known strategy consultant: Kenichi Ohmae, managing director of McKinsy & Company's offices in Japan and adviser to leading corporations around the world. Ohmae presents no magic formulas. Nor does he claim to have discovered the key strategic principles presented in The Mind of the Strategist. What he has done is, first, to bring these principles to life by setting them out in his own dynamic personal perspective and, second, to show how they have actually been forged into winning business strategies by such Japanese giants as Sony, Nissan, Yamaha, Mistubishi, Honda, and Matsushita. He shows the creative strategist's mind in action: weighing the company's strategic strengths and weaknesses, sizing up the options open to competitors, identifying the real wants and needs of the customer, and translating strategic concepts into successful business action. His book is full of simple but powerful ideas presented with a freshness and conviction that should stir the imagination of any business executive. He sets out the concept of strategic advantage and describes four distinct methods of capturing it. He describes the dynamics of what he calls "the strategic triangle"' and shows how effective strategies can be devised through focusing on any one of its three components: company, customer, competitions. Virtually every point is illustrated with concrete examples from the fiercely competitive world of Japanese business.
Order The Mind of the Strategist : The Art of Japanese Business paperback from Amazon Today!
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A good book. It gives a condensed version of the history of business through 12 of the wealthiest and most revolutionary businessmen in history. Means plays well off of the documentary, which is not necessary to see to enjoy the book, adapting an easy pace without going too in depth. For those looking for an overview of the revolutionary businessmen in western history than this is an excellent book. Each person gives us not only a look at a critical business practice, some might even say necessity, they also give a look at the time and attitude of that point in history. For those looking for business strategy or principles. The people chosen show them at their finest and often most pure form. I give the book an A.
Where there’s greed and ambition you’ll find . . .
Money & Power
From the pivotal spice trade routes to the streets where merchants sold their wares . . .from the royal court of Spain where a faulty economic plan led to ruin to early American industrial capitals and assembly lines . . . from the fever pitch of Wall Street to the groundbreaking moments in television and motion picture history.
CNBC’s acclaimed documentary Money and Power deftly traces the movement of trade, banking, industry, and commerce from East to West, from ancient times to modern. Now this companion book provides an expansive global view of the moguls and dynasties that have defined business in the last millennium. Featuring a Foreword by the documentary’s award-winning creator, David Grubin, Money and Power offers important lessons that are of timeless value–and inspiration for the next generation of groundbreakers and visionaries of business.
Book Info
Based on a documentary by David Grubin, this history of money and power examines the movement of trade, banking, industry and commerce from East to West, and from ancient times to modern. Offers important lessons for business today, by exploring the challenges, trades, industries and finance of past generations, all over the world.
From the Inside Flap
From merchant ships to microchips, industry has been defined by the powerful business leaders who have caused seismic shifts in the growth of commerce. These visionaries introduced themselves, their products, and their ideas at just the right moments in time, unwittingly bringing about the defining change of the last millennium–the transfer of money and power from Church and crown to the new secular empire of business.
The companion book to the acclaimed CNBC documentary created by Emmy award-winning producer and director David Grubin, Money and Power takes readers on a gripping journey to the birthplaces of business–from the feudal estates of medieval Europe to the teeming streets of ancient Venice to the serene campuses of Silicon Valley. Written by top-notch journalist, editor, and novelist Howard Means, this sweeping narrative tells a dramatic tale of how pathbreaking moguls and their dynasties paved the way to wealth and prosperity and shaped the modern world.
Tracing the origins of trade, banking, industry, commerce, and power from East to West, this inspiring book transports the reader to the bustling centers of business across time. Inside are revealing, motivational profiles of such legendary figures as:
* St. Godric, the twelfth-century monk whose fierce ambition helped him break free of his confines and create his own wealth–until his faith led him along a different path
* Robert Woodruff, who took advantage of a shrinking globe and a second world war to create the first global brand–Coca-Cola
* James Watt and Matthew Boulton, who launched the rotary steam engine just as industry was bursting forth with new energy demands
* Henry Ford, who not only built automobiles but also the market demand for them–making him richer than even the Carnegies and the Rockefellers
* Bill Gates, whose entrepreneurial instincts and technological brilliance earned him the fame and fortune that embodied the Information Age
Following the march of industry from the oceans and the railroads to the highways and cyberspace, Money and Power is a testament to the drive and innovativeness of these economic pioneers–and to the resulting remarkable global connections that have finally opened the road to riches to all.
Order Money and Power: The History of Business Hardcover from Amazon Today!
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Excellent book for understanding Canada and where it's headed as it moves into the next millennium. There are short articles ranging from demographics to investments each from experts in the field. Reading through the articles gave me a much better understanding of Canada and Canadians. Also the authors provide interesting glimpses at their fields and where they see the country going in the next few years. I give it an A+.
Post 2000: Business Wisdom for the Next Century provides a glimpse through the window to the future landscape that will greatly influence our business and personal lives. Over forty contributors, all experts in their fields, were asked by The Financial Post's editors to look for probable future trends, using established pasterns as a starting point. Their responses were first published by The Financial Post in a series of supplements in 1997.
Post 2000 brings together ideas from economists, demographers, investment counsellors, political scientists, trade specialists, and historians. It is a thoughtful and wide-ranging prier for all who are interested in Canada's future at the dawn of the new millennium.
Order Post 2000: Report On The Nation by FINANCIAL POST paperback from Chapters Canada Today!
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It focuses on using the Internet in all kinds of business. It lays out strategies for using the Internet, extranets and intranets to make your company fast and competitive in this "hyper-competitive" business environment. The author sees hyper-competitive, fast changing industries and a company's only hope is to be super fast (first if possible) and to maximize your use of the Internet, Extranets and Intranets. Lots of real life examples and not too bogged down in jargon or overexplanations. An interesting read for anyone in business. I found a few things useful in the book myself. A B book.
The effects of the on-line revolution are being felt far beyond Silicon Valley, and now all businesses - from start-ups to established companies - face "survival of the fittest." A company or product can be an industry leader one moment and obsolete six months later. Entire industries, ranging from computer sales to stock trading, are being thrown into patterns to take advantage of the convenience and cost savings that are available over the Web.
For companies, this pressing need to continually create new, different, better products to stay one step ahead of the competitions defines the new reality of business today, the world of "HyperWars." To stay afloat, business managers need practical guidance, and they need it fast. Drawing on extensive research and his pioneering experience in e-commerce, industry innovator Bruce Judson outlines eleven practical strategies for thriving in this hypercompetitive environment. Including "Use the Internet as the World's Most Sophisticated Telephone" and "The Magic in 'Free'," these visionary strategies are illustrated with hundreds of examples of Internet Initiatives real companies - from pool suppliers to major businesses like Cisco and Chrysler - are implementing today. Not just for companies selling products over the Web, HyperWars explains how the Internet can and must be incorporated into all of a business's operations, to do everything from cutting procurement, marketing and communication costs to deepening customer relationships.
Both a wide-ranging analysis of the massive changes the Web is bringing to all industries and a crucial, grooundbreaking redefinition of business strategies, HyperWars provides readers with the essential tools they need to survive and profit in the new competitive era.
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It read alot like a sales brochure pitching the Benefits Realization Approach. It was a bit long to read. The idea and subject is very interesting and worth looking into but it could have been better presented. If you are looking to do something to change the way you IT investment you'll want something that gets more to the point and shows you what to do, if you're looking at just reading about IT you'll want something more readable. It's alot like having a text book that you wish you had the professor to go over it with you. I give it a C, mainly for the topic.
How do businesses ensure they get their money's worth from their rapidly growing investments in information technology (IT)?
Managing IT successfully involves making difficult, big-ticket IT investment decisions, implementing the right IT solutions, and accurately measuring the business benefits they deliver. Investment in information technology has grown 20 - 30% per year over the past 20 years, and is now the largest single element of capital investment for most organizations. Yet few executives approving these costly investments have a clear understanding of the results they will achieve or, once the money is spent, whether they actually achieved the promised benefits. This is the Information Paradox - the conflict between the widely held belief that information,, and investment in IT t provide that information, is a "good thing" , and the all too frequent reality that we cannot demonstrate a connection between IT investments and business results.
Regardless of your industry - from service to manufacturing - or your function - from sales to production to distribution - those who understand where and how to apply information technology, in order to drive value, will be the winners in the emerging knowledge economy.
To date, we are not getting the value that technology can deliver. At the best of times,, IT works productivity miracles. At the worst of times, IT projects are canceled or cost 200 to 300% more than expected. And, once the technology is delivered, people have trouble using it to get business results. IT solutions abound - packaged software, high performance hardware, sophisticated operating systems - along with a burgeoning service industry to help implement them. How can managers cut through this complexity to "pick the winners" and achieve measurable value?
In response to this challenge, John Thorp and DMR Consulting Group have engineered a unique, client-tested "Benefits Realization Approach" - it resolves the Information Paradox by introducing a new benefits focused mindset. It replaces monolithic technology-driven IT projects with blended business investment programs, that integrate organizational, business process and the people elements of your business. It also demonstrates how to manage business investment programs as a coherent portfolio to produce measurable results.
The DMR approach, based on many years of extensive research and development, is illustrated with case studies from companies as varied as Ericsson,
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It's a combination selling brochure, Six Sigma introduction, overview and summary. A focus on any one of these would be sufficient, though how how inviting to a general reader would remain to be seen. Together, as they are in this book, makes the whole book seem almost pointless. If you've been sold on the idea there's no need for the selling techniques used to sell the program in the book. If you're looking to be sold on the technique, there's no need for a summary. You don't care you haven't been sold on it yet. If you're looking for a summary, there's no need for an introduction, at the least much less of an introduction, or the selling. I give this book a C-. If you want to know about Six Sigma in order to use call the company ask for a brochure, it will save you time, money and energy.
Six Sigma is the most powerful breakthrough management tool ever devised, promising increased market share, cost reductions, and drastic improvements in bottom-line profitability for companies of any size. The darling of Wall Street, it has become the mantra of Fortune 500 boardrooms and round the world because it works.
What is Six Sigma? It is first and foremost a business process that enables companies to increase profits dramatically by streamlining operations, improving quality, and eliminating defects or mistakes in everything a company does, from filling out purchase orders to manufacturing airplane engines. While traditional quality programs have focused on detecting and correcting defects, Six Sigma encompasses something broader: It produces specific methods to re-create the process itself so that defects are never produced in the first place.
Most companies operate at a three to four sigma level, where the cost of defects is roughly 20 to 30 percent of revenues. by approaching Six Sigma - fewer than one defect per 3.4 million opportunities - the cost of quality drops to less than 1 percent of sales.
This is because the highest quality also results in the lowest costs. When GE reduced its costs from 20 percent to less than 10 percent, it saved a billion dollars in just two years - money that goes directly to the bottom line. This is the reason Wall Street and corporations as diverse as Sony, Ford, Nokia, Texas Instruments, Cannon, Hitachi, Lockheed Martin, American Express, Toshiba, DuPont and Polaroid have embarked on corporate wide Six Sigma programs.
Six Sigma should be of paramount importance to every forward thinking executive and manager determined to make their company world-class in their industry.
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This book looks at sixty trends the author sees as being one of the next big things. Hill doesn't go for the bigger "mega-trends" but takes those and picks out smaller more manageable, personal trends. Some of these in no particular order are: interconnectedness, Peter Pan-ism and mercenary management. For each trend he gives the factors and factoids, implications and the opportunity. This gives you what he thinks are what the facts are, what it means and how you can use it. This gives the book a usefulness that is good. The problem I have is that I see some of the trends as not that useful or groundbreaking. Some of them also have a duh factor. As in duh tell me something I don't know. I suppose with 60 trends this is inevitable and it does give the book a something for everybody quality. Overall I give the book a B-. A useful first step if you want to see what might be coming next but I wouldn't bet the farm on anything in this book by itself.
Famed marketing guru Sam Hill, whom Fortune has called a "Madison Avenue Bigfoot" and a "Top Ten Mind," offers an enlightened look into the future and reveals the trends that will have the biggest impact on marketing, brand management, and product development over the next decade. He sifts through the fads to uncover the important and lasting movements, and gives marketing professionals a whirlwind tour of the fundamental changes to come and the consumer trends those changes will lead to.
With an eye toward the future, Hill explains not just the trends themselves but also the worldwide forces that lie beneath them-rapid population growth, exponentially better technology, urbanization, globalization, and interconnectedness. Packed with over 2,000 statistics and examples, Sixty Trends in Sixty Minutes looks at the opportunities these trends create and how to realize them. Savvy marketers would be wise to study the powerful global forces that are changing our world today in order to learn who their customers will be tomorrow.
Sixty Trends in Sixty Minutes shows marketers how to recognize and profit from nascent trends and also provides practical solutions for marketers in need of a quick fix. It offers proven strategies for exploiting current trends in everyday marketing situations, and presents case studies of brand phenomena like Starbucks and Madonna that explore the creative ways in which forward-thinking individuals have successfully exploited trends that they understood well before anyone else. Hill dissects a rapidly changing world into useful parts with humor, foresight, and purpose, making this book an essential read not only for marketers but for consumers who want to understand the forces at work in the marketplace.
Order Sixty Trends in Sixty Minutes by Sam Hill copyright 2002 Hardcover from Amazon Today!
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Have you ever had a consultant come in start off trying to explain what he's doing and you look at him funny. The consultant then goes in and does his thing. A few months later after the consultant's changes have had time to settle, get the edges off, etc. you go "he had some pretty good ideas" I'm glad we hired him. That's sort of how this book is. In the beginning the author starts off explaining his theory and ideas and you kind of go "ummm yeah okay". Then he starts to put it into practice and you go "okay I see using part of that and some of this would work for my business" and at the end he brings it all together and half the stuff he said in the beginning was semi-useless, but you can see why he said it, and it comes together and you say "I can see how this would improve things".
The first part of the book reads like a textbook. It could be 100 pages less and be much better. I wasn't too impressed with the examples he used to illustrate his points expecially in the first part of the book. Some of the companies he uses are from companies that failed or did not use the idea he is talking about well. This in itself isn't a bad thing but the way he uses them are. The examples could be done better using them as examples of a specific point as either a success or a failure instead of being put out there to be shown as an example of a company using the technique but the success or failure is of question as is the application of the technique.
The last part of the book is better. He uses less examples and the tone is less like a textbook. He deals with the theory of building a strategy for where your company and/or industry is going so finding good examples would be difficult. That is why when the author moves away from trying to use examples and more into explaining the strategy that the book becomes better. Overall I give the book a C.
Underneath the ever-roiling surface of public markets, information technology continues to remake the economy. Fifty years after the first commercial computer was sold, we stand on the brink of introducing intelligence into over a trillion items in commerce at a price too small to calculate. The age of disposable computing will transform every industry. Are you ready?
In The Strategy Machine, Larry Downes, the bestselling coauthor of Unleashing the Killer App, charts a proven course through the uncertain future of business. With both winning and losing case studies, The Strategy Machine shows how to develop and nurture a "strategy portfolio" that can withstand the pressure of potent internal and external obstacles. Much like your personal financial portfolio, a strategy machine hedges your bets across a wide range of dramatically different challenges your business will face. Downes's approach generates new profits from new information products and services, regardless of the industry or the size of your company.
In the book, Downes introduces important new tools every manager can use, including:
Nothing short of revolutionary, The Strategy Machine shows managers how to reinvent business and integrate new technology for a revolution in progress. Regardless of the kind of business or the size of your company, whether you work in operations, sales, or finance, or whether you are the CEO or a manager in training, the tools in this book will teach you how to innovate on a daily basis and how to profit from the transformation going on right now in your industry. This is an essential guidebook for the information revolution -- one that will help companies succeed in the long run, with a winning portfolio, in today's economy.
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A better title might have been: A History of Tim Hortons from the Head of Marketing. Not as snazzy but it gives a truer meaning to what the book is about. Ron Buist in the first half gives you the beginnings of Tim Hortons and how it was the hard work and dedication of the founders and the franchisees who created the brand "Tim Hortons". Taking an idea that differentiates you from the rest, listening to your customers and workers, giving people more than they expect these are all the underlying ideas that pepper the first half of the book. Nothing too revolutionary or an example of marketing genius at work. The second half are a few memoirs or recollections of a couple of the "True Life" television commercials and the "Roll Up to Win" campaign. And also the Tim Hortons Foundation is thrown in afterwards.
All in all the book is the recollections of Ron Buist as the marketing director at Tim Hortons for over 25 years. When you look at the book and after you've read it that would seem obvious as to what it would be but its not quite sold that way, at least to me. I would have also liked to hear some insights given into what made the marketing work. How has the marketing and what marketing in particular has helped make Tim Hortons a Canadian staple. There wasn't a lot of that in here. Sort of like rolling up the rim of your coffee cup and seeing you won a timbit; it's something but not what you were really hoping for. Overall I give it a B-. Okay style but lacks a bit in substance.
Want to know the secret recipe behind Canada's most popular coffee-and-donut chain? According to former marketing director Ron Buist, it took "1 hockey player, 1 favourite barber shop, 1 former drummer, 1 police officer," plus "the luck hard work brings" to make Tim Hortons the phenomenal success it is today.
In Tales from Under the Rim, the marketing genius who invented "Roll Up the Rim to Win" tells how a little donut shop grew into a Canadian institution. Beginning with his first day on the job, Buist recalls the lean years, when the company's tiny advertising budget made a creative, grass-roots strategy as much a necessity as an inspiration. He profiles the founders - Toronto Maple Leafs star defenseman Tim Horton, donut entrepreneur Jim Charade, and Nova Scotia-born franchise wizard Ron Joyce - as well as many of the franchisees on whom the chain's success rests.
This engrossing business memoir tells the whole story of "Roll Up the Rim," from the eureka moment in 1986 to the no-frills contest's status as a defining feature of Canadian life. Buist describes the genesis of the "True Stories" commercials, so engaging they've attracted their own devoted fans, and he tells humorous behind-the-scenes tales from these and other TV shoots.
Order Tales from Under the Rim: The Marketing of Tim Hortons Hardcover from Amazon Today!
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The book identifies eight factors that it considers key to companies being successful, four of which are essential plus two of a second group of four. The factors described are good and the research seems thorough. The problem comes with the presentation. The book gives example of each factor and how it is used in a number of different companies. This is okay though I think using a set number of companies as examples and how each used the four essential factors might have worked better. The problem I have is that the examples and explanations of the factors are not detailed enough. If a company excels at developing strategy then show how they develop strategy and how it works and how I can apply it to my company. Instead the book shows a company using strategy and the benefit they got from it. One interesting thing that the book does do is near the end they show a company that didn't use the four essentials or two of the secondary factors and how it declined because of it. This was more interesting because you could make connections and see where things went wrong.
While the basics of the book aren't bad, and the theory of the four plus two formula seems sound enough the book itself doesn't work as well as it should have. It lacked enough punch to wow you into reading more, and the factors presented aren't new enough to do it either. One factor that might have contributed to this is that the factors are rather general and the companies that are success used them in varied and sometimes completely different ways. There is no simple one, two, three steps you can do to make your company successful, even if you use the formula. Also the presentation wasn't done well enough to overcome the generalness of the material. There's no story just the findings of the research and some examples; good enough for a text book maybe, not enough to get me to read otherwise. I give the book a C.
Why do some organizations consistently outperform their competitors?What do managers at the best companies know - and do - to keep their organizations on top?
When it comes to implementing management practices that can propel aa company to lasting success … WHAT REALLY WORKS?
With hundreds of well-known management practices and prescriptions promoted by consultants and available to businesses, which are really effective and contribute to the growth and continued success of a company? Which do little or nothing?
In their groundbreaking new book, What really Works, William Joyce, Nitin Nohria, and Bruce Roberson put forth findings that will revolutionize the art and practice of management.
Based on the Evergreen Project, a massive five-year study in which consultants and business school professors at top universities around the country analyzed ten years of data on 160 companies and more than 200 management practices, the authors discovered that all successful companies simultaneously master six specific management practices.
The 4+2 formula divides the practices into four primary practices, all of which must be followed, in the areas ofIn What Really Works, the authors present their stunning findings through lively case studies focusing on companies they've designated Winners, Climbers, Tumblers, or Losers, depending on their performances over the ten-year period studied.
What Really Works singles out the areas that are truly important for management to focus on to achieve success. Equally important, it shows readers where not to waste their efforts.
With these and other findings revealed, the authors have t last uncovered the real keys to true long-term business success and What Really Works.
Order What Really Works: The 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success Hardcover from Amazon Today!
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