It is nearly impossible to make sense of what is going on in the business world, but wouldn't it be better if you had someone to talk to about it with? We think so.

On Tuesday, November 18th, we are going to hold an economic group therapy session at the Eisner Museum in Milwaukee. This is not a pity party, but rather an opportunity to talk about what is going on in your world, get past the fear, and muster up some courage to take into the new year.

No dinero is needed. The event is FREE.

Let's self-diagnose together. We'll bring the books.

Economic Group Therapy with 800ceoread
Tuesday, November 18th | 5:00 - 5:45 PM
The Eisner Museum of Advertising and Design | 208 N. Water Street
Free Admission

Please RSVP to jon at 800ceoread dot com

Tune in.

The folks over at The Economist recently researched the extent of the hedging. They counted at minimum 18 books on the crisis that are either in the works or already in the shops. More are certain to join.

The published books include: The Subprime Solution by Robert Shiller, Charles Ellis's The Partnership on Goldman Sachs, The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson (due out in November), and one on the Oracle of Omaha The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.

Writers who signed on for future looks at the financial crisis are Joe Nocera and will be publishing through Penguin. And CNBC's Charlie Gasparino who signed with Collins Business.

The Economist ends the review by comparing publishers' hedging to that of what's currently happening on Wall Street -- placing all their bets in investments seemingly full of potential and, in the end, few will be successful best sellers.

Don't dismiss that premise as lofty and unrealistic, though. The success of sustainability efforts in this world depends on our adoption of idealistic standards and a vision for a healthier world. Ehrenfeld addresses the obstacles and problematic attitudes to this vision, and offers practical steps to adopting a sustainability mindset on both the personal and corporate levels. He suggests new, holistic approaches to sustainable design that won't act, as others have in the past, as Band-Aids. Instead, Ehrenfeld focuses on the routes we should take to ensure success.

Here is John Ehrenfeld on The Tao of Sustainability:

Flourishing can occur only if we pay close attention to the three critical domains that the forces of modernity have dimmed:

• Our sense of ourselves as human beings: the human domain.
• Our sense of our place in the [natural] world: the natural domain.
• Our sense of doing the right thing: the ethical domain.

And here are his suggestions about the Special Role of Business in becoming a sustainable society:

• Replace the rubric of sustainable development with that of sustainability as flourishing


• Stop publishing misleading advertisements hinting that ecoefficiency will solve the world's problems and save money at the same time


• Use the "Tao of Sustainability" as a strategic and operational template


• Create a culture of sustainability in the workplace


• Businesses should design their offerings to guide behavior toward ethical responsibility


• Social responsibility, like charity, begins at home.

You can read more about John and Sustainability by Design at: http://johnehrenfeld.com/index.html

In a post titled "A Must Read", Kelly Carr starts with two titles from other business journalists meant to help reporters write stories: Michelle Leder's "Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company's True Value" and Chris Roush's "Show Me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication"

In an effort to further prep interns, Carr gathered up a set of recommended from practicing business journalists. These suggestions will look a little more familiar (thought I just ordered the third rec):

• "Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco," by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
• "24 Days: How Two Wall Street Journal Reporters Uncovered the Lies that Destroyed Faith in Corporate America," by Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller
• "200% of Nothing: An Eye Opening Tour Through the Twists and Turns of Math Abuse and Innumeracy," by A.K. Dewdney

On the extended list, you'll find even more of what we normally recommend, but Good To Great is the only true "business book to solve problems" book on the list.

• "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York," by Robert A. Caro
• "Liar's Poker" and "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis
• "Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner," by Alec Klein
• "The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker," by Steven Greenhouse
• "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," by Barbara Ehrenreich
• "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron," by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
• "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don't," by Jim Collins

[hat tip: DataJoe and Addictomatic]

Tall tales
The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company

A number of interesting things about Disney emerge in this excellent, readable account of Pixar's early years. David Price claims, for instance, that Disney's chief executive, Michael Eisner, considered shutting down the company's animation unit after he took over as chief executive in 1984, an astonishing fact given the subsequent success of cartoon films such as "The Lion King". Mr Price also makes clear just how much Pixar owes to Disney: it was the larger company's marketing for "Toy Story", for instance, that gave Mr Jobs the confidence to launch an initial public offering of shares in Pixar in 2005. Go to the review.

and

Marketing maestros
Alpha Dogs: The Americans Who Turned Political Spin into a Global Business

James Harding, who is now the editor of the London Times but used to report on American politics for the Financial Times, has written a punchy book about spin. Its title, "Alpha Dogs", refers to an American company, the Sawyer Miller Group, which for a while shaped and polished political campaigns all around the world. Go to the review.

On Tuesday May 27, The Wall Street Journal begins a three part analysis of the collapse of Bear Stearns.

Buffeted by the most treacherous market forces in a generation and hobbled by indecision, the firm's leaders missed opportunities that might have been able to save the 85-year-old brokerage.

Part one was sad yet fascinating...I look forward to the next installment.

Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work as founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, the pioneering microcredit organization in Bangladesh. He launched Grameen 31 years ago to help poor people start businesses. Since then the microcredit movement has gone global, with copycat organizations springing up in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Now Yunus is back in the public eye with a concept he calls social business. This form of capitalism, he believes, can make progress against poverty in ways that governments and traditional charities have not done. He lays out the concept in his new book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. It's an inspiring volume, full of practical information for people who are motivated to try out his ideas.

Read the full review here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_10/b4074085355044.htm?chan=magazine+channel_opinion

Although they did write the book for laypeople, you really have to be interested in the topic to wade through the first 150 pages, and you'd have be a real policy wonk to read the appendix after that, which lays out their plan in detail after already giving you a general outline in the last chapter.

The book begins, however, with this:

Is it any wonder that there's such a huge outcry about prescription drugs, particularly their high cost? Consider this: If your only source of information was commercial television, no one could fault you for thinking that GERD was a public health crisis in the United States on the scale of AIDS in Africa. In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, you can reasonably assume that American TV watchers saw dozens of advertisements encouraging them to check with their doctors to make sure they don't need to treat GERD with the Purple Pill.

What's GERD? It's the acronym for gastrointestinal esophageal reflex disease, commonly known as acid reflux disease--a condition in which the stomach releases an acid back into the esophagus. Until the 1980's, physicians rarely used the term, and when they did mention GERD it was probably to describe a complication of a rare pancreatic disorder. But that was before drugs like Zantac and Nexium came onto the market.

I haven't reached all the way into the heart of this book yet, but so far it has been very balanced, in-depth, and informative. And, for someone who's not a health-care policy wonk, it's even been rather entertaining.

Ambrose Bierce, the great American author of An Occurrence at Owl Creek, is quoted at the beginning of Chapter 5--How Not to Lower Drug Prices--saying "Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table."

Entertaining indeed.

I imagine most of you have heard about Amazon's new e-reader, Kindle. Steven Levy wrote it up in the latest Newsweek. Of course, it spurred conversations here. Some of us admittedly curious about the newfangled gadget that can hold 200 books; others, swearing off e-books altogether.

At $399, it's the first e-reader with internet access (and free wireless, at that). Add books in a minute's notice. Download your Word documents and pictures; take it on the go. Blogs, newspapers, books and wikipedia, all available at your fingertips. It sounds just about perfect.

As with everything, there's the other side. Seth points out, "The beauty of real books is that they don't require a reader, which means that millions of people are eligible members of the market. Even if you only have .0001% market share, you can still get your book read."

I can't help but wonder when (if not already) the e-reader gains a following like the iPod. It will certainly happen; it's just a matter of time. Is Amazon's Kindle the answer to digital books?

Maybe the question is, will you buy one?

I got on a plane early this morning to head for California. I am attending O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference in San Jose. A bunch of folks are here to talk about the future of publishing.

The actual conference starts tomorrow with today being a set of tutorials on a variety of topics. I caught the tail end of the RSS talk (widgets were the main buzz) and I am attending the Print On Demand session later today. If there are interesting points, I will pass them along. Otherwise, expect more tomorrow.

Tags: toc2007

That reminds me, have I mentioned lately that Dan Heath and Chip Heath (authors of Made to Stick) will be in Milwaukee on February 6? Check it out.

More than a shiny new toy, more than the buzziest product of the decade, more than a business tool with ginormous cultural cachet; this iPhone blows me away in the following ways. First of all, Apple has done what few other companies ever achieve, which is to introduce a product that is so far beyond any other existing comparables that it literally redefines the category. I can’t think of any other product that so completely defies an existing industry mindset by proving to the incumbents that it can win customer love, when the prevailing attitude is tolerance at best and pure hatred as the norm.

Second, this new product isn’t one new thing. It’s a good two dozen. The touch-screen technology, the way the music fades when the phone rings, the accelerometer which turns the screen from portrait to landscape when you rotate the device, the ability to manipulate data with your fingertips, and so very much more. The shiny salivation/salvation of this product resides in the cumulative genius of all these elements working in concert. More than any one awesome trick, they create a user experience that promises to be as delightful as it is simple and intuitive.

Third, the sheer organizational fortitude required to actually deliver that tiny tool into Jobs’ hands is massive. For Apple to be able to come up with the innovations, commercialize them with this product, while keeping the process and product a secret, are all awesome feats. To do all of them is awesome to the nth.

Why gush on this blog? Because we are all about business ideas, and an event of this significance just can’t be ignored. It got me wondering what business books are the most relevant. And, to be honest, the event serves as somewhat of a humbling experience. When you look at the list of business books we’ve touted over the past months, very few come to mind that have deep relevance to this story. And, well, just as the genius of Apple has always been the way that it presents brilliant technology as a simple intuitive interface, I believe that one huge takeaway from yesterday’s event was the way that so many important business lessons served as underlying technology for the event.

I can’t think of one single reference to a business book that Steve Jobs has read (unlike, say Bill Gates, who has written his own, and famously touted Alfred Sloan’s My Years With General Motors in the past.) So here’s a simple exercise. Imagine that you are competing with Steve Jobs. Where would you go for the best wisdom? Here are a few books that seem relevant to me in terms of capturing some of the principles that led up to the iPhone:

Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things for insights into the way that elegant design wordlessly and effortlessly focuses the user on the best experience.

Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan’s Execution for insights and affirmation about the primacy of execution; and Scott Berkun’s excellent (and, by the way, worthy of much more love and attention!) The Art of Project Management for, well, the art of project management.

William Manchester’s three-volume The Last Lion biography of Winston Churchill for insights on charismatic leadership and big goals.

My Turn At Bat by Ted Williams with John Underwood: another great biography about the rewards which accrue to a stubborn passion for nothing less than being the very best one can be.

I’d like to cite three more books: one that identifies how to execute strategy that completely redefines an industry (while being based on an incremental platform of new products). And a book that explores how everything changes when the web is not merely available everywhere, but, when the iPhone arrives, finally appealing to use anywhere. And finally, a great book on the Apple corporate culture. But....the titles just don't come to mind.

What are other people’s thoughts, and nominations for this list?