800-CEO-READ Blog

United Nations

On one of my recent pilgrimages to New York City, I re-discovered the art of tourism and decided to visit places I have not been to in a while. One of these was the United Nations. Upon entering the perimeters after the extensive security screening, you cannot help but be in awe over the countless number of conference rooms, offices, and works of art that the many countries have donated. India's masterpiece in one the great hallways stands out in my memory, but all of the works represent not only the country involved in the U.N. but their people and culture as well. We are but one part of a great picture in more way than one, and visiting the U.N. puts it in perspective a hundred fold. The many rows upon rows of delegates that serve there are a reminder that one person can make a difference sometimes, no matter how big or massive their country is - everyone has a voice.

Upon leaving the U.N. I stumbled upon... (OK, I looked for it because I'm a book nerd) its massive bookstore. The United Nations has among part of its strengths, a great publishing company. Here are some highlights from their library that may be of interest to you.

World Statistics Pocketbook 2007

Global Environment Outlook GEO 4

Yearbook of the United Nations 60th Anniversary Ediiton

The State of the World's Children 2008 in French and Spanish too

UNEP Year Book 2008: An Overview of Our Changing Environment

Global Outlook for Ice and Snow

The Universe of the Largest Transnational Corporations

You can also visit the U.N. publishing company HERE

The Bottom Billion

Over at WorldChanging is Ethan Zuckerman's review of Paul Collier's book The Bottom Billion. Collier points out that in much of the world poverty is decreasing. It's but a few states (maybe 50) which account for the poorest people in the world that are not seeing any improvement. From Zuckerman's review:

The problem is a set of nations that aren't developing. Since the 1960s, when many of these countries threw off foreign rule through colonialism, these nations have progressed very slowly or, in some cases, regressed. Most of these nations are in sub-Saharan Africa, but countries like North Korea, Burma, Afghanistan and some other Central Asian nations also are home to members of the bottom billion. Collier refers to this set of nations as "Africa+", but that's a bit deceptive - all his examples come from Africa, though some lessons may be applicable to countries like Tajikstan as well. (He never quite defines the set of nations - South Africa is explicitly exempted, and I assume nations like Botswana are as well - less clear if nations "on the bubble" like Senegal and Ghana are included.)

Zuckerman's review summarizes the key points in Collier's book; you'll find the bullet point solutions Collier offers towards the last third of the review. The question of poverty has long been on the table. If you're looking for a book that presents a possible solution, The Bottom Billion is a good start.

And while we're on the subject, Jeffrey Sachs' latest Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet landed on my desk today. More on that soon.

Book Excerpt - Bull in China

From: A Bull in China by Jim Rogers

This is from Rogers' current book in which he examines the growth and future of the Chinese economy. He just didn't stumble upon this, he first came upon China's importance in the world back in 1984 on his motorcycle tour around the world. Rogers has been following this certain country's growth and development for some time. Take a look at just one of the many things he has noticed:

With a growth rate averaging 9 percent since the start of the 1980s, the value of the Chinese economy has pretty much doubled each decade, and shows few signs of stopping.

If projections hold, China will surpass the United States as the world's largest economy within twenty years. On top of that, China attracted nearly US$70 billion in direct foreign investment during 2006, which, combined with its trade surplus, has brought Beijing's foreign-currency reserves above US$1.3 trillion (now the larget in the world). In one astounding decade, China's manufacturing base for durable goods increased one hundredfold.

But all those heavy numbers are just a starting point. Sleek office towers and assembly lines rising from rice paddies don't mean as much as China's immeasurable advances in civil conduct, internationalized awareness, and opportunities for achievement. In urban areas, the traditional greeting "Have you eaten today?" has been replaced by "Have you surfed the Net today?" Chinese executives, engineers, artists, athletes, and designers are already leading the world into "the Chinese century".

FYI: Rogers' book Hot Commodities has just been published in paperback!

Other Jim Rogers books include:

Investment Biker
Adventure Capitalist

New Excerpt - The Elephant and the Dragon

There's a new excerpt up on our Excerpts blog. It's from The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us. There are many books on China and India out these days, but The Elephant and the Dragon focuses specifically on the predictions and fears about the global impacts of these emerging superpowers. Author Robyn Meredith stresses understanding these nations before anything else. Because by understanding how China and India are reshaping the global economy, the rest of the world can learn how to adjust to a new and exciting--and sometimes scary--new era.

From the introduction:

This is the story of how India and China are changing their destinies and, with that, changing the world's. As they move from the ranks of developing-world countries toward superpower status, India's slow-but-steady approach contrasts with China's rocketlike rise.

Check out the excerpt: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007376.html

Greenspan's inspiration

Greenspan was a big fan of Atlas Shrugged -- a book some consider to be one of the most influential business books ever written.

Many have criticized the book for encouraging selfishness. Yet, Greenspan refuted it in a letter to the NYTimes in 1957:

'Atlas Shrugged' is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.

You'll find he's not the only famous businessman who learned from and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novel.

p.s. If you haven't heard, Greenspan's memoir The Age of Turbulence is due out today.

Everyone Talking About Greenspan Book

The media doesn't know what an embargo is anymore. I can tell you that publishers are driven nuts when reporters start talking about a book before it comes out. With the book slated to come out Monday, Alan Greenspan's book The Age of Turbulence is the latest to fall victim to impatience.

It started with Portfolio Magazine article by John Cassidy which will appear in the October issue but showed up online earlier this week. There are vague references to the material in the book and is more of a critic of Greenspan's tenure as Federal Reserve Chairman.

The Wall Street was skipped the indirect route and featured the an extensive article on the front page of their Saturday edition. The lead is:

In a withering critique of his fellow Republicans, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoir that the party to which he has belonged all his life deserved to lose power last year for forsaking its small-government principles.

In "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," published by Penguin Press, Mr. Greenspan criticizes both congressional Republicans and President George W. Bush for abandoning fiscal discipline.

and later in the article is the stuff people are going to be interested in:

In coming years, as the globalization process winds down, he predicts inflation will become harder to contain. Recent increases in the price of imports from China and a rise in long-term interest rates suggest "the turn may be upon us sooner rather than later."

Left alone, he said, the Fed's policy-making body, the Federal Open Market Committee, can keep inflation between 1% and 2%, but that could require forcing interest rates to double-digits, a level "not seen since the days of Paul Volcker," his predecessor as Fed chairman. "I fear that my successors on the FOMC, as they strive to maintain price stability in the coming quarter century, will run into populist resistance from Congress, if not from the White House," he writes.

If the Fed succumbs to that pressure, inflation could rise from a little over 2% at present to an average of 4% to 5% by the year 2030, he writes. Ten-year Treasury yields, now below 5%, will rise to "at least 8%" with the potential to go "significantly higher for brief periods." This, he says, will lead to stagnant returns on stocks and bonds and much smaller gains in housing prices.

You are going to be seeing alot of Alan in the next couple of weeks. Here is a head start:

• Videos from 60 Minutes
• Interesting Excerpts on Leading Blog
• AP's Story on the Book

Jack Covert Selects: All the Tea in China

All the Tea in China: How to Buy, Sell, and Make Money on the Mainland by Jeremy Haft, Portfolio, 224 Pages, $25.95 Hardcover, June 2007, ISBN 9781591841593

Jeremy Haft does not believe that China is the evil empire. He believes instead that China represents a boom for business. All the Tea in China tells how Haft learned to do business in China and practical advice on how to tap into this growing market. Every page is ripe with anecdotes revealing how he believes Chinese business culture operates:

Thousands of years of Chinese jurisprudence, then, dealt solely with punishment of crimes, meted out by fiat. There is an old saying in China: 'Heaven is high, and the emperor is far away.' Meaning: 'Do whatever you can get away with.' Despite the best efforts of China's government to adapt to a system ruled by laws, this lawless attitude is still commonplace in China business practices today.

And from there he delves into the meat of doing business in China. Included in the book are chapters on: Getting Started, Reading the Market, Orienting Yourself, Buying from China, Selling to China and Competing with China.

Unlike some of my favorite books on this subject, such as The Travels of a T-Shirt in a Global Economy, which tells an outstanding story but isn't a guide to business, this is a book loaded with practical take-to-the-bank advice. Not to say that All the Tea in China is without its levity and spirit, though; in fact, what really sets the book apart is the author's sense of humor. Stories of factories that disappear during the night, of factories he was told complied with all the requirements but, when he visited, had no roof, or of international standards and practices ("Do you use GAAP? Sure, I wear their khakis").

Books on China are a dime a dozen, nowadays, but Haft's All the Tea in China is one of the best of the bunch.

WSJ Review of The Elephant and the Dragon

Here's a review from today's Wall Street Journal. The Elephant and the Dragon, by Robyn Meredith, details the rapid economic growth both China and India have experienced over the past 100 years. Meredith shows that these two emerging economic giants have important lessons the U.S. and other nations can learn about global power and competition.

"Ms. Meredith reminds us of just how far both countries have traveled in the past half-century or so. In China, 30 million to 40 million people starved to death from 1959 to 1962 because of Mao's collectivizing farm policies, and nearly all of the country's universities were shuttered for more than a decade during the Cultural Revolution. In India, the post-independence experience with socialism and central planning subjected the economy to what became known, derisively, as "the Hindu rate of growth." Cumbersome, inefficient, patronage-laden enterprises sustained poverty rather than alleviating it. Over time, the irresistible logic of capitalism coincided with a juggernaut of globalizing technology to overturn the old paradigm and usher in reform."

Here's a link to the review: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118471088635069491-search.html?KEYWORDS=robyn+meredith&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month

And a link to the book: http://800ceoread.com/products/?ISBN=9780393062366

What Podcasts People Are Listening To

Here is a little peak into what people are listening to on our Podcasts blog. This is a ranked list for the first four months of 2007.

1. The Elegant Solution Interview with Matt May
2. Marketing and Sales for Big Complex Selling Interview - Part 1 with Brian Carroll
3. Marketing and Sales for Big Complex Selling Interview - Part 3 with Brian Carroll and Jill Konrath
4. Everyday Greatness Interview with Stephen Covey
5. The Difference Maker Interview with John Maxwell
6. Confessions of An Economic Hitman Audio Excerpt
7. Made To Stick Interview with Dan Heath
8. Growing Great Employees Interview - Part 2 with Erika Anderson
9. Purpose Interview with Nikos Mourkogiannis
10. Growing Great Employees Interview - Part 1 with Erika Anderson

Sushi with an approval stamp.

Japan's Ministry of Agriculture is seeking to create a create a recommendation program for Japanese restaurants operating outside of Japan; according to The American, that's more than 20,000 restaurants -- 9,000 of which reside in the U.S. The Ministry's goal is to educate the world about Japanese cuisine -- the preparation, the history, and the ingredients.

To give you a bit of history, this is from The Sushi Economy (released today):

What the world now knows as sushi began as a street snack in Edo-era Toyko, fast food well over a century before that term was ever applied to hamburgers, fries and shakes. In the place of its birth, sushi has changed since then -- flitting between high and low, the elite and pop spheres, one-time trophy fish blue marlin displaced by tuna -- as food entrepreneurs have been pushed to respond to adjustments in Japanese lifestyles and tastes.

And, on what the Ministry is up against -- how certain types of sushi came to be:

The most famous non-Japanese contribution to the sushi repertoire was the California roll of avocado and crab, invented in Los Angeles in the 1960s by Japanese chefs adapting to American tastes and available ingredients. In Brazil -- whose first city, Sao Paolo, has the world's largest Japanese population outside Japan and where in 2003 the number of sushi bars exceeded that of Brazilian barbecues -- the avocado in California rolls is replaced by mango, in deference to local produce and the national sweet tooth. A small Singapore chain serves a roll that features both avocado and mango. Elsewhere in that country, diners can feast on curry rolls and Hainanese chicken-rice rolls, often in halal sushi bars catering to the small nation's increasingly wealthy Malaysian Muslim population. Hawaiians make sushi with SPAM, a vestige of contingency measures adopted by island residents during World War II rationing...


In 2001, after studying a broad in Chicago, a young Japanese woman named Yoko Shibata returned to Toyko and opened an American-inspired join called Rainbox Roll Sushi. Its menu is filled with all the newfangled preparations that scandalize traditionalists: the namesake concoction of salmon, squid, shrimp and flying-fish roe; a "Nixon roll" of grilled eel, cucumber and cream cheese; and a "sushi sandwich" on a croissant. Now "New York-style sushi" is seen by Tokyoites as an established restaurant genre. One of its signature dishes is the spicy-tuna roll, which American chefs developed to unload odd scraps of fish past their prime, assuming that slathering them in mayonnaise and chili would help mask dubious taste and texture.


When it comes to their food culture, the Japanese have always been borrowers (ramen has origins in China and tempura in Portugal) and fusionists (in the late nineteenth century, Westernized dishes like English-style curry and omelettes filled with ketchup-sauced rice were the rage). Around 1900, the Japanese were already making the sushi rolls with ham and Western-style black pepper. What most Americans (and Japanese, too) would think of as the Platonic ideal of the "authentic" and the "traditional" sushi experience -- a fatty, pink slice of toro nigiri [if you need a reference picture, click here] served by a chef to a customer seated before him -- is in fact no older than the California roll.

I wonder how strict the guidelines for a Japanese restaurant will be.

Daily Dose of The Executive Almanac Part 5

Today's Dose of The Executive Almanac:

How to Deal with White-Collar Crime

"In September 2004, the Chinese government executed four bank executives for fraud totaling $15 million. The two banks involved were state-owned entities. Wang Liming, an accounting officer at China Construction Bank, was put to death, along with an accomplice, Miao Ping, for stealing 20 million yuan (about $2.4 million) from the bank. Another employee at China Construction, Wang Xiag, was executed for stealing another 20 million yuan in an unrelated case. The fourth man executed was Liang Shihan, an official at Bank of China's branch in the southern city of Zhuhai. He was accused of stealing $10.3 million.

China executes more criminals than the rest of the world combined."

High Stakes

This story caught my attention today because this book just arrived on my desk this week:

Boeing Versus Airbus: The Inside Story of the Greatest International Competition in Business by John Newhouse (due out in mid-January, from Knopf)

After months of speculation, it looks like Boeing really is on track to outsell Airbus--for the first time in six years. Newhouse details the decades-long competition and raises questions about both companies' priorities. It looks like a great read.

China Part 2

As I posted earlier, I am reading the brilliant winner of the FT/Goldman Sachs business book of the year China Shakes the World. In the chapter on piracy I found a fun story.

“Similarly, a series of how-to business books written by Paul Thomas, a Harvard Business School professor, became a mini publishing sensation in Beijing in 2004. As Thomas’s fame grew, he lent his reputation to other books by writing prefaces, and everyone seemed to be winning. Then it emerged that there was no professor at Harvard that fitted his description, and the books bearing his illustrious name had been written by students paid the equivalent of one-third of a cent per word to make it up. Fake books, it turns out, are big business. Several publishers, including state-owned houses, had more than a hundred bogus titles on the market in early 2005.�

China

The winner of the 2006 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the year award was China Shakes the World by James Kynge. I want to give you a little taste of the book before I finish it and write a Jack Covert Selects review.

In the chapter called The Population Paradox Kynge talks about the lure of the huge population of new consumers waiting for our consumer goods. He states:

“But if foreign businessmen arrive in China transfixed by size and scale, many of them depart haunted by the concept of share. They envisage being able to sell their products to a multitude of Chinese and then watch as the hoped-for multitude is sliced and diced into morsels. Only certain sections of society are willing buyers of most products, and reaching them is made difficult by layers of local protectionism. When a market is finally found, aggressive domestic competitors have usually got there first. The fabled billion-person market is frequently reduced to a fraction in the figment of a dream.�

Interesting.

China Shakes The World wins Book Award

China Shakes The World by James Kynge is the 2006 winner of the Financial Times & Goldman Sachs Book of The Year Award. Read the coverage here.

More Eastern Influence on American Business

BusinessWeek has an interesting article on the rise of Indians in the study of management. They mention names like C.K. Prahalad (Fortune At the Bottom of the Pyramid), Ram Charan (Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business), and Vijay Govindrajan (Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators). The article suggests some common themes in their approaches:

Indian theorists, of course, have a wide range of backgrounds and philosophies. But many of the most influential acknowledge that common themes pervade their work. One is the conviction that executives should be motivated by a broader purpose than money. Another is the belief that companies should take a more holistic approach to business--one that takes into account the needs of shareholders, employees, customers, society, and the environment. Some can even foresee the development of a management theory that replaces the shareholder-driven agenda with a more stakeholder-focused approach. "The best way to describe it is inclusive capitalism," says Prahalad, a consultant and University of Michigan professor who ranked third in a recent Times of London poll about the world's most influential business thinkers. "It's the idea that corporations can simultaneously create value and social justice."

It goes on to talk about how management gurus have gone from quoting Sun Tzu's The Art of War and moved now to the ancient Indian classic Bhagavad Gita.

Also known as Song of the Divine One, the work relates a conversation between the supreme deity Krishna and Arjuna, a warrior prince struggling with a moral crisis before a crucial battle. One key message is that enlightened leaders should master any impulses or emotions that cloud sound judgment. Good leaders are selfless, take initiative, and focus on their duty rather than obsessing over outcomes or financial gain. "The key point," says Ram Charan, a coach to CEOs such as General Electric Co.'s (GE ) Jeffrey R. Immelt, "is to put purpose before self. This is absolutely applicable to corporate leadership today."

Patagonia on increased transportation costs

At Patagonia we have started to prepare for what we think will become a more locally based economy. The global economy based on cheap transportation is unsustainable. Our present mode of production includes buying organic cotton in Turkey, shipping the bales to Thailand to be processed into fabric, shipping the fabric to Texas to be cut and then to Mexico to be sewn and then onto our warehouse in Reno and then to our stores and dealers and finally to our customers' homes. Shipping costs may soon start to outstrip the cost of material and labor. We must begin to find a way to produce our goods locally. by Yvon Chouinard

...what else they're doing...

Business Books: Fall 2006 Preview

I am starting to get asked what the big books for the fall are, so I thought I should get a list up here. As always, there is something for everyone.

September

• A Leader's Legacy by James Kouzes and Barry Posner (Jossey-Bass) - This is a follow-on to the best-seller The Leadership Challenge; alot of people like Kouzes and Posner's take on leadership.
• Hoopla by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Powerhouse) - Powerhouse has been doing the Lovemarks/Kevin Roberts books and I have been looking forward to seeing what they do with another ad agency.
• Success Built to Last: Creating A Life That Matters by Jerry Porras et al. (Wharton School Publishing) - Built to Last author Porras this time asks what people rather than companies need to do to find success.
• Bangalore Tiger: How Indian Tech Upstart WIPRO is Rewriting the Rules of Global Competition by Steve Hamm (McGraw-Hill) - The senior writer goes inside this Indian phenom to find out what has brought all the success.

October

• Mavericks at Work: Why The Most Original Minds In Business Win by Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre (William Morrow) - Bill and Polly created business conversation in the 90's at writing Fast Company magazine. If you have missed that passion and energy, you'll love the book.
• Tough Choices by Carly Fiorina (Portfolio) - This is going to be a big book. The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard tells her rise to the top and what happened when she got there.
• L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon by Leon Gorman (Harvard Business School Press) - Word has it that HBSP has been bugging the folks at L.L. Bean for years to do a book; it finally here and expect to see lots of cross-promotion in other L.L. Bean communications.
• Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston (Yale) - This title shows how companies can use green issues as a competitive weapon.
• The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom (Portfolio) - What do Alcoholics Anonymous, Napster, and al Queda all have in common? No one runs them. I love this book and highly recommend you check it out.
• Setting the Table: The Power of Hospitality in Restaurants, Business, and Life by Danny Meyer (HarperCollins) - Meyer knows something about delivering service. His restaurants occupy four of the top twenty spots on Zagat's.
• Tailgating, Sacks, and Salary Caps: How The NFL Became the Most Successful Sports Franchise in History by Mark Yost (Kaplan, Nov.) - This is about the business of football in all its glory.

Quick Quote #1 - The Box in the Media

From time to time, we'll post quotes from authors who get quoted in the media.

"The container came at a time when everyone in America was concerned about automation, not just on the docks. The thing that was unusual about the longshoremen was that they got compensation for the loss of their jobs, which most people in the economy did not."

Marc Levinson, author of The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger quoted in How Longshoremen Keep Global Wind At Their Backs: As Trade Soars, Union Workers Prosper by Staying Up With Technological Change; Threat of a Day Without Ports (WSJ, 7/26/04).

The Box

Last month we posted a Jack Covert Selects review on a new book called The Box. You can check the review here. The Economist also reviewed the book last month and loved it.

Today's Wall Street Journal reviewed it with a review that liked the book but took the author to task for being a little "slow going." I thoroughly enjoyed the book but everybody is entitled to their opinion.

If you subscribed to my reviews, you would have been the "first on your block" to know about this book and other books that I pick as being especially worthy. If you are interested in getting the reviews, you can email me at jack at 800ceoread [dot] com and I'll make sure you can be the first on your block to know or subscribe in the Newsletters portion of our website.

The World is Flat 2.0

Today's Publishers Weekly talks about a new version of The World is Flat which features 100 new pages and a new introduction. Check the story out here

The new edition will be available on April 18, 2006.

Order the new edition here.

Tuesday Links

Here are some miscellaneous things we have ran across last week that you might be interested in.

• Today's 6 Worst Business Books (Chief Executive) - I am not a big fan of these kinds of articles. We have always believed that people want to know what to read, not what not to read.
• World In A Box (The Economist) - They review The Box. Author Marc Levinson writes a great history of the ocean cargo container and how it has changed global trade. This was one of Jack's picks for March.
• How To Manage In An Unpredictable World (FT.com) - Dr. Don Sull presented an online course for the site. I think this is way cool. There are five short video segment (it was presented over a week's time) and extensive lecture notes. I think they are onto something.

Business Books in Advertising?

IBM has a new ad campaign with the tagline "What Makes You Special?" They have run a couple of big spreads in The Wall Street Journal over the past couple of weeks. I am sure they have shown up other places. It ran again today.

In the ad, they feature Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat and a quote from the book:

"...the flattening of the world means...we are now connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network, which...could usher in an amazing era of prosperity and innovation."

I am not sure I have ever seen a business book quoted and featured in advertising for a F500 company.

More Bad News for Detroit

Last night on the network news they had a piece about the Top Ten cars from Consumer Reports. What I found extraordinary was when the CR guy was asked about reliability he said,

"An eight year old Toyota has the same repair record as a three year old GM vehicle."

Books for Doing Business Globally

In the April issue of HOW magazine, designer Christopher Liechty is interviewed about his firm's work. Based in Utah, Meyer & Liechty have done a tremendous amount of work globally. He recommends the following books if you want to learn more about doing business across cultures:

• Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters with Cultural Difference by Craig Storti
• Designing Across Cultures: How To Create Effective Graphics for Diverse Ethnic Groups by Ronnie Lipton
• Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands: How to Do Business in Sixty Countries by Terri Morrison, Wayne Conway and George Borden
• Dun & Bradstreet's Guide to Doing Business Around the World (ISBN 0735201080, out of print) by Terri Morrison, Wayne Conway and Joseph Douress

Business Book Authors on BookTV

Yes, I watch BookTV. Most of the time, you will get authors who have written books on politics or history. Over the past month, I have run across two segments on business book authors and they were both good.

The first segment was Richard Florida. He wrote the very popular Rise of the Creative Class and the follow-up Flight of the Creative Class. He talked about both of the books and his most recent research with the Gallup Organization. Two tidbits:

• In his first book, it talked about the sorts of things that a city needed to support a creative class. The most important is the attitude of openness in the community itself. In his polling research, he has found the largest prejudice to be against age. People often don't want young people in their community. This ranked ahead of race, religion, political view, and sexual orientation.
• Right before Katrina hit, Florida was doing spot polling around the country to find out how happy they are with their lives. He believes location is central to happiness. New Orleans ranked the highest out of the 22 cities polled. The two most important stated reasons were strong religious ties and nightlife.

The second segment was one with Yossi Sheffi, author of The Resilient Enterprise. He wrote most of the book while he was on sabbatical form MIT. He was doing some research for the UK government. Their concern was that the next terrorist attack isn't going to be against Big Ben or the London Bridge, but against Tesco and disrupt the food supply in to the general public. The book is about the operations side of business and how plan for vulnerabilities in the lean supply chains of today.

I only caught the first 15 minutes of this one, but I found it interesting that the CDC and NY Department of Health track OTC drug sales in the city. They believe that people will first look for something at drugstore to fix what ails them before going to the doctor. If they see a spike in Benadryl sales, they know the next place to look is admissions for something potential more serious.

Harvard Business Review's 2006 Reading List

In the February issue, Harvard Business Review has their 2006 Reading List.

• The Elephant In The Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life by Eviatar Zerubavel (Oxford University Press, March)
• Working With Your Is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself From Emotional Traps In Work by Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster (Warner Business Books, March)
• Family Capitalism: Wendels, Haniels, Falcks, and the Continental European Model by Harold James (Harvard University Press, March)
• Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, March)
• The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy by AnnaLee Saxenian (Harvard University Press, April)
• Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature by Joseph Badaracco (Harvard Business School Press, April)
• Guanxi (The Art of Relationships): Microsoft , China, and Bill Gates' Plan to Win the Road Ahead by Robert Buderi and Gregory Huang (Simon and Schuster, May)
• Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Difference into Opportunities by Mark Gerzon (Harvard Business School Press, May)
• The Managerial Moment of Truth: The Essential Step in Helping People Improve Performance by Bruce Bodaken and Robert Fritz (Free Press, May)
• Treasure Hunt by Michael Silverstein and John Butman (Portfolio, May)
• Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn by Tojo Thatchenkery and Carol Metzker (Berrett-Koehler, May)
• The G-Quotient: How Gay Men Are Changing the Face of Leadership by Kirk Snyder (Jossey-Bass, June)
• Untapped: Creating Value in Underserved Markets by John Weiser et al. (Berrett-Koehler, June)
• Shopportunity! A Manifesto for Retail Revolution by Kate Newlin (Collins Business, August)
• CEO Pay and What to Do About It: Restoring Integrity to Both Executive Compensation and Capital Market Relations by Michael Jensen and Kevin Murphy (Harvard Business School Press, August)
• Applebee's America: What Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Can Learn from Each Other by Ron Fournier, DouglasSosnik, and Matthew Dowd (Simon and Schuster, September)
• The J Curve: The Shape of the World by Ian Bremmer (Simon and Schuster, September)
• The High-Purpose Company: Why It Wins, How It Grows, and What Sets It Apart from the Fakes by Christine Arena (Collins Business, September)

C.K. Prahalad - Business Prophet

BusinessWeek ran a six page profile of C.K. Prahalad (sub. needed) in their January 23, 2005 issue.

Fact about the author:

Profession: University of Michigan professor, speaker, and consultant

Clients: Citibank, Phillips, Phillip Morris

Description of style from past client: "...mean, but it was effective."

Books he has authored: Competing For The Future (1994 with Gary Hamel), Fortune At The Bottom of The Pyramid (2004), The Future of Competition (2004 with Venkat Ramaswamy)

What C.K. stands for: Coimbatore Krishnarao

Long Beach Harbor

This past week I went to speak at an American Booksellers Association school on the subject of outside sales. This post is not about that. It is about the van ride to the hotel from LAX. The event was held at the Long Beach Hilton. I took a Shared Van to the hotel and the van had a couple of people to drop off before me. We came into Long Beach from the South going over a bridge. The ride over the bridge was really mind boggling. From the top of the bridge, where we sat for awhile, you could look in all directions and see nothing but shipping containers being moved around. Sacks five and six high sitting on the ground. Multiple trains moving North and East with containers stacked two high. Trucks looking like ants all over the place moving the containers. Cranes everywhere you looked.

Our local newspaper had a series of articles about globalization last year with a mind boggling picture from Hong Kong or some such place with shipping containers everywhere, but to see it live with my own eyes was really amazing. Anybody who thinks that their business, their livelihood will not be affected by the massive amounts of goods coming into the country, might be interested in some swamp land I own in Florida.

Coming this spring from Princeton University Press is a book I really liked called The Box which is the story of the way we have moved freight coming into our country for the last 100 years and how the shipping container, i.e. The Box changed the world.

Forbes' Best Business Books of 2005

I thought we had seen all of the lists for 2005, but Forbes published their selections on Tuesday.

To determine the very best of the crop, we polled a dozen writers, editors and publishers from Forbes. Thirty-three books were nominated, which we then winnowed down to the five very best, with the help of the editors of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com. We did not attempt rank the top five--all of them are excellent in completely different ways. Try these tomes, and you'll be all caught up on your 2005 business reading.

Their selections are:

• The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism by Jon Bogle
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• Disneywar by James Stewart
• The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth by Benjamin Friedman
• The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman

Hat Tip: BizBook Nuggets

Bookscan's Best Selling Books of 2005

Neilsen Bookscan released their list of the 200 best selling books of 2005. Bookscan takes data from about 4500 retailers around the country. When we talk with publishers, they are watching closely what happens there.

I pulled the business books from their list (you'll see my definition is a little loose):

6. World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman
13. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
15. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
42. Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
55. Winning by Jack Welch
59. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
67. Good To Great by Jim Collins
86. On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt
128. The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke by Suzy Orman
141. Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
167. Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham
173. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by Harv Eker
183. Jim Cramer's Real Money by Jim Cramer
191. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

I also love that you will find Oh, The Places You Will Go! at #107 and Green Eggs and Ham at #156.

More Plans For The World Is Flat

Thomas Friedman is thinking of opening up his book The World Is Flat for all to contribute. Here is a quote from the Financial Times:

"It's been suggested to me that we actually turn the book into an open-source product. Just put it up on the web like Wikipedia [the collaborative online encyclopedia] and let people add to it."

Next For Friedman

Publisher's Weekly interviewed Thomas Friedman for their Three Anwers Feature on the heels of him winning the Goldman Sachs/FT Business Book of the Year Award. For fans of The World is Flat, here is question three and the answer:

PW: What's your next project?

TF: I'm going on leave for a month and working on the updated and expanded version of The World Is Flat, which will be out in paperback and probably also a [new] hardback edition this spring. To show how far we've come since the first edition, at the beginning of November the podcast version of this book was the #1 selling album on Apple iTunes. When I started this book in March 2004 podcasting didn't even exist.

Creative Class

Richard Florida's books are interesting and troubling. His latest The Flight of the Creative Class is another thought provoking book. Fast Company has an exclusive web based interview with him. He is interviewed by Adam Hanft, founder and CEO of Hanft Unlimited:
Here is one of the questions and answers.

FC: Any kind of two-tier sociological stratification makes us a bit nervous. For everyone in the Creative Class there must be someone in, well, the Creative Underclass. Isn't that a recipe for a dysfunctional society?

Florida: Absolutely. It's something I talk about often, from my book, The Flight of the Creative Class, to the Atlantic Monthly article I referred to before. It's a deeply, deeply disturbing phenomenon, this socioeconomic division our world -- and especially frighteningly, our country -- faces in the 21st century global creative economy.

Check out the rest of the interview here.

The Way The World Might Be

Can anybody really predict the future? No.

What is interesting though is what Royal Dutch/Shell did in the 1980's and 1990's with scenario planning. Fast Company did an article in July 2002 on how scenario planning changed the course of the entire company.

What grew out of that thinking was the Global Business Network. This was a group that included Peter Schwartz (The Art of the Long View), Jay Ogilvy (Creating Better Futures), Napier Collyns, Stewart Brand, and Lawrence Wilkinson. The idea was to continue the evolution of scenario planning and scenario thinking.

The current GBN CEO is Eamonn Kelly and he has a book out from Wharton Business School Publishing called Powerful Times: Rising To The Challenge of Our Uncertain World. It reminds me of a more academic version of Funky Business.

Kelly describes extensively what is going on in the complex world around us. The meat of the explanation is given in dichotomies (clarity vs. craziness, secular vs. sacred, technology accleration vs. pushback, prosperity vs. decline). After laying out the case, he asks two questions - "Will sources of innovation, leadership and change be centralized or decentralized?" and "Will the United States exert more or less influence globally?" He shows alternate scenarios for what the world might look like as the answers to those questions varies.

For you crystal ball watchers out there, it may be worth a look.

FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book Award Finalists

This morning, they announced the finalists for The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of The Year Award.

The finalists are:

• The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote The Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle (Portfolio)
• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Globalized World in the 21st Century by Thomas Friedman (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (William Morrow)
• Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets by Constantinos Markides and Paul Geroski (Jossey Bass)
• The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Econonmist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli (Wiley)
• DisneyWar: Battle for the Magic Kingdom by James Stewart (Simon & Schuster)

Each finalist receives £5000 (~$9000) and the winner will receive £30000 (~$54,000). The overall winner will be announced Monday, November 21st.

Stay Tuned....

What's the right word?

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Jagdish Bhagwati (In Defense of Globalization) wrote an op-ed entitled A New Vocabulary for Trade [sub. needed]. In the piece, he questions Thomas Friedman's use of the word "flat" to describe to disappearance of competitive advantage among countries. Bhagwati doesn't really agree with Friedman's assessment, and prefers to use the word "kaleidoscopic. Here is a description of what he means:

Today, you have it; but in our state of knife equilibirum, you may lose it tomorrow and regain it the day after. Boeing might win today, Airbus tomorrow, and then Boeing may win it back again. It is as if the design of trade patterns that you see now gives way to another, as if a kaleidoscope has turned.

Examples from Abroad

If you want a guaranteed way to get mentioned on the 800-CEO-READ blog, write a book with examples and anecdotes from outside the United States. Simply Better did a good job with that last year.

Today I am going to point you to Made in China: What Western Managers Can Learn from Trailblazing Chinese Entrepreneurs by Donald Sull with Yong Wang. My first attraction to the book with the idea of learning about how Chinese start-ups get their start. The authors have built the book around some interesting ideas. Here are the main chapter headings:

• Meet the Players
• Acknowledge the Fog of the Future
• Conduct Reconaissance Into the Future
• Outcycle the Competition
• Develop a Flexible Hierarchy
• Manage Relationships Dynamically
• Go For The Gold
• Get Big Right
• Leading in an Unpredictable Way

The real question for you on this book is how many of the companies listed below do you recognize:

• Legend Group Ltd.
• Sina Corporation
• Haier Group
• Guangdong Galanz
• UTStarcom
• AsiaInfo Holdings
• Hangzhou Wahaha Group
• Ting Hsin Group

That's what I thought. You better pick this book up.

Outsourcing

Clyde Prestowitz has written a couple of seriously important books when it comes to international trade. Back many years ago, he wrote the primer on Japan and U.S. business called Trading Places—currently out of print. He has just published a great book about China and our international trade issues called THREE BILLION NEW CAPITALISTS. I loved the book and so does Henry Blodget, who is a former securities analyst, who writes frequently for Slate and New York magazine. He reviewed the book in the Sunday July 3, 2005 New York Times.
One snippet from the review:

"The work is getting done faster and better, Prestowitz argues, because Indians are not only hungrier than we are, but better educated. China, India, Japan and Europe all churn out more science and engineering degrees than we do. Worse -- and downright embarrassing -- is the state of American education. Globally, our 12th-graders rank only in the 10th percentile in math (that's 10th percentile, not 10th). Our students also rank first in their assessment of their own performance: we're not only poorly prepared, we have delusions of grandeur."

Check out the complete review here.

BusinessWeek B-School Book Bets

BusinessWeek asked B-schoolers what books they are reading this summer. The list includes:

• The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman
• The Travels of a T-Shirt In the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change At Work by Debra Meyerson
• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffery Sachs
• A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Biz Books In The Bookstores

I was talking with my cohorts from the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops yesterday (we are owned by the same company). The lead buyer was talking about the number of business titles on their bestsellers list last week.

It can be a little unusual for the bookstores to be selling a lot of business books. People generally end up at our bookstores looking for childrens books or a good novel.

Here are the biz titles and the position on their list:

#2 Freakonomics

#3 The World is Flat

#5 Blink

#9 Winning

I think it again shows the crossover potential for a lot of these "worldview" type books.

Tom Peters Essentials

Tom Peters and DK have taken his most recent book Re-Imagine and broken it into four smaller topic-related books. They are called the Tom Peters Essentials Series. They include:

• Talent: develop it, sell it, be it
• Leadership: inspire, liberate, achieve
• Design: innovate, differentiate, communicate
• Trends: recognize, analyze, capitalize

I like the series. You'll still find the heavy design of Re-Imagine, but it is toned down. I think it makes it easier to read than the original.

Flat World Manifesto

OverMatter has pretty much posted the entire Thomas Friedman article from New York Times Magazine. For those looking for a introduction to The World Is Flat, this is a great start.

The World is Really Flat

This would be the yang to today's ying on The World Is Flat.

BusinessWeek Reviews Friedman

Jack liked The World Is Flat.

BusinessWeek reviewed it and gave it 4 out of 5 stars.

The World is Flat

Tom Friedman, who has won three Pulitzer Prizes, has written what he calls "A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. It is not only about globalization but it is about how we got here. I am 100 pages into it and truly can’t put it down. I have called Todd to read him paragraphs. Now I want to share a paragraph with all of you.
Talking about open source—which I have always wondered about, being a non geek—and how it is a challenge for Microsoft. He says:

"Why would so many people be ready to write software that would be given away for free? Partly it is out of the purely scientific challenge, which should never be underestimated. Partly it is because they all hate Microsoft for the way it has dominated the market and, in the view of many techies, bullied everyone else. Partly it is because they believe that open-source software can be kept more fresh and bugfree than any commercial software, because of the way it is constantly updated by an army of unpaid programmers. And partly it is because some big tech companies are paying engineers to work on Linux and other software, hoping it will cut into Microsoft’s market share and make it a weaker competitor all around. There are a lot of motives at work here, and not all of them altruistic. When you pet them all together, though, they make for a very powerful movement that will continue to present a major challenge to the whole commercial software model of buying a program and then downloading its fixes and buying its updates."

Nation of Rebels Review

I have been intrigued by Nation of Rebels by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. I have only had time to read the introduction. While looking through my new copy of Paste Magazine, I noticed they did a review. This was written by Phillip Christman:

Fallen hippies trading in their Volkswagens for SUVs. To most of us it's very emblem of a sellout, but to Canadian philosophy professors Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, authors of the provocative Nation of Rebels, it's a logical progression. The book charges that by attempting to build a counterculture through purchases of "alternative" goods (VW bugs then, Range Rovers now), political radicals have turned their backs on unsexy-but-concrete ways of fighting injustice through the legislative process, while strengthening the power of consumerism (after all, someone made money off all those piles of Adbusters issues and rebel-fashion-accessories at the bottom of their closets). Wrong as much as it's right (the authors seem to think organic food is a showoff luxury item--preserving topsoil ain't a luxury, fellas), this book deserves a careful read.

If you pick up Issue 15, you will get a sampler CD with tracks from Aimee Mann, Glen Phillips (of Toad the Wet Sprocket fame), and Ani DiFranco. I subscribe just to get the great sampling of new music. They also have a sampler DVD in this issue.

Whole New Mind: A Primer for the Conceptual Age

We are witnessing a shift from the “logical, linear, computer-like capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and a society built on the inventive, empathic, big picture capabilities of what’s rising in its place, the Conceptual Age.” I wholeheartedly (and whole mindfully) agree with the premise of A Whole New Mind: Moving From the Information Age to the Conceptual Age by Daniel Pink. And while this isn’t the definitive handbook into personally delving into that new age, it is an excellent primer -- with caveats.

I had high hopes for A Whole New Mind. I wanted to fall headlong in love with this book but could only muster a strong "let's be friends" attraction. So maybe I'm still pining as I write this.

I was aching for a book I could recommend and hand out to individuals in a transitory phase in their life either due to circumstances foisted on them or by a gnawing pull to “find their purpose.” But the book leans too much on fire-and-brimstone arguments to totally motivate the unconverted. Pink claims we need to ask ourselves:

1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
2. Can a computer do it better?
3. Am I offering something that satisfies the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age?

The implicit assumption is: Learn these “high concept, high touch” skills and you are guaranteed your safety net a bit longer. But folks whom successfully carve out a niche of “uncommoditizable” skills aren’t extrinsically motivated by fear of destitution. While Pink tells us that that the fusion of the right brain and left brain are merely metaphors for this conceptual age revolution – he overlooks a bigger metaphor: the passionate, intrinsic drive and motivation which stem from the more primitive, emotional part of the brain.

It’s hard to know whom Pink is writing for: the analytical “comfortable cadre…in for a big surprise” left-brainers whom he assumes are being kicked dragging and screaming into the Conceptual Age or the “creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers” that are somersaulting with joy that finally their due has come. Or both.

I can see why the latter would enjoy the book. Even if you think you already breathe this stuff day and night, I had a really great time reading the chapters on the six senses/aptitudes (design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning). Each of the six is worthy of a book in their own right, so I wasn’t expecting completeness here. They were the big treat in the book and, refreshingly, the persuasive tactics were gone in these sections.

It’s easy to assume that Pink is saying that right-brainers will eat the left’s lunch. But this isn’t a fighting match between the two. Pink is advocating an “androgynous mind” – one that integrates and fuses the