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Posted Jan. 15, 2008 3:05 a.m. by katie
In Book Awards - 800 CEO Read Blog
The day has finally arrived. After careful consideration, the winners have been determined for our first annual Business Book Awards. Nearly 300 titles were submitted which were then critiqued and reviewed by our editorial staff. A list of 13 titles make up the winners for each category as well as the Best Business Book of 2007.
8cr would like to congratulate all the winners for their hard work and say thank you to all who participated in our first awards program!
Best Business Book of 2007
Made to Stick
Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Category Winners
Advertising/Marketing:
Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Random House
Biographies/Memoirs:
Bill & Dave by Michael S. Malone, Portfolio
Entrepreneurship/Small Business:
No Man's Land by Doug Tatum, Portfolio
Fables:
The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly, Hyperion
Finance/Economics:
A Demon of Our Own Design by Richard Bookstaber, Wiley
Globalization:
The Elephant and the Dragon by Robyn Meredith, W.W. Norton
HR/Organizational Development:
One Foot Out the Door by Judith M. Bardwick, PhD., AMACOM
Industry:
The Last Tycoons by William D. Cohan, Doubleday
Innovation/Creativity:
Group Genius by Keith Sawyer, Basic Books
Leadership:
The Secret Language of Leadership by Stephen Denning, Jossey-Bass
New Perspectives:
In Spite of the Gods by Edward Luce, Doubleday
Personal Development:
Responsibility at Work by Howard Gardner, Jossey-Bass
Sales:
The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes, Portfolio
: : : :
Congratulations! You can find the full list here.
strategy + business Best Books of 2007
Posted Dec. 27, 2007 3:15 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog
The folks over at strategy + business have chosen what they consider the best business books of the year. There were eight categories, and each one was assigned to an expert in that field for review. Each reviewer also delivered an essay on the books chosen, and they are all good reads. The categories were Behavioral Theory, Biography, Biotech, Capitalism, The Entrepreneurs, Human Capital, Innovation, and Strategy. If you'd like to learn more about the the reviewers, or would like to read their essays, you can find all of that on their website (membership is free). Here I will just list the books chosen, putting "s+p's Top Shelf" in bold and starring the books that made our shortlist as well.
Behavioral Theory: reviewed by Howard Rheingold
Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity by John Henry Clippinger, PublicAffairs*Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger, Times Books
The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You by Mark Buchanan, Bloomsbury USA
Biography: reviewed by James O'Toole
Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw, Penguin PressAndy Grove: The Life and Times of an American by Richard S. Tedlow, Portfolio
The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World by Randall Stross, Crown
Biotech: reviewed by by Joe Flower
Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet by Denise Caruso, Hybrid Vigor PressScience Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech by Gary P. Pisano, Harvard Business School Press
Capitalism: reviewed by Diane Coyle
Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity by William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, & Carl J. Schramm, Yale University Press*Grande Expectations: A Year in the Life of Starbucks' Stock by Karen Blumenthal, Crown Business
The Most Important Fish in the Sea by Bruce Franklin, Island Press
The New Capitalists:How Citizen Investors Are Reshaping the Corporate Agenda by Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik, & David Pitt-Watson, Harvard Business School Press
Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas K. McCraw, Belknap Press
The Entrepreneurs: reviewed by Tom Ehrenfeld
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston, ApressMommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea into a Million Dollars, and How You Can, Too! by Kim Lavine, St. Martin's Press
*No Man's Land: What to Do When Your Company Is Too Big to Be Small but Too Small to Be Big by Doug Tatum, Portfolio
*Typo: The Last American Typesetter, or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars by David Silverman, Soft Skull Press
Human Capital: reviewed by R. Gopalakrishnan
30 Reasons Employees Hate Their Managers: What Your People May Be Thinking and What You Can Do about It by Bruce L. Katcher with Adam Snyder, AMACOMEgo Check: Why Executive Hubris Is Wrecking Companies and Careers and How to Avoid the Trap by Mathew Hayward, Kaplan Business
Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner, Harvard Business School Press
Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy — and Others Don't by Lynda Gratton, Berrett-Koehler
The Truth about Being a Leader... and Nothing But the Truth by Karen Otazo, FT Press
Innovation: reviewed by Michael Schrage
Brilliant! Shuji Nakamura and the Revolution in Lighting Technology by Bob Johnstone, Prometheus BooksDreaming in Code: Two Dozen Pro-grammers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software by Scott Rosenberg, Crown Books
The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun, O'Reilly Media
Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design by Bill Buxton, Morgan Kaufmann
Strategy: reviewed by David Newkirk
Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese Cost Innovation Is Disrupting Global Competition by Ming Zeng & Peter J. Williamson, Harvard Business School PressStrategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement by William Duggan, Columbia University Press
The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (and What to Do about It) by Michael E. Raynor, Doubleday
Unstoppable: Finding Hidden Assets to Renew the Core and Fuel Profitable Growth by Chris Zook, Harvard Business School Press
Wal-Smart: What It Really Takes to Profit in a Wal-Mart World by William H. Marquard, McGraw-Hill
We're big fans of the strategy + business list and the essays they include each year. Todd has written a post on the list each year dating back to 2003. If you're interested in what titles they've chosen in the past, I've linked to those posts below.
Your "Inner Circle" in No Man's Land
Posted Oct. 9, 2007 7:05 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog
A few weeks ago we had Doug Tatum, author of No Man's Land, in town for an event with area business people. He talked about that difficult transition from a small company to a big company. One message that seemed to resonate with the audience was the idea that to grow in a healthy way, leaders must refresh their "inner circle" of confidants and managers. They must bring in experts and competent leaders--which can mean making difficult decisions when your entrepreneurial company grew from the ground-up, led by people who were passionate about the product or service, but perhaps not knowledgeable about running a company.
(From Chapter 3 of No Man's Land)
"Who should occupy these positions? As an entrepreneur in No Man's Land, you need competent and experienced people in leadership positions--people who can help you execute. After all, the firm is going through a transition without a ton of resources at its disposal; it can't make many mistakes and still hope to survive...To avoid making too many mistakes and to reduce risk, rapid-growth firms need people who have worked with larger organizations and who know what the firm will look like at a larger scale. These people won't be acting instinctively to solve problems, as entrepreneurs do when making their initial customer promises. Rather, they will be acting on the basis of what they know from experience to be true. They won't be learning as they go, and thus won't be making the natural mistakes that are part of the learning process. They have already made these mistakes, and they've done so on other people's dimes."
It was a pleasure to have Doug in Milwaukee. While most of the audience left looking pensive, we heard from several people that the subject matter was immediately relevant to issues their companies are facing.
Jack Covert Selects - No Man's Land
Posted Oct. 2007 3:00 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
No Man's Land: What to Do When Your Company is Too Big to Be Small, But Too Small to Be Big by Doug Tatum, Portfolio, 256 pages, $24.95 Hardcover, September 2007, ISBN 9781591841722
It is often difficult to find your way forward in business, particularly when your company is growing at a fast clip. The possibilities are myriad and the next step is not always clear. It is in these times of great opportunities and fast decisions that it can be most helpful to pick up a good business book. Just the process of sitting down with a book and immersing yourself in new ideas and another's outlook may make the next step more apparent and sure. No Man's Land by Doug Tatum is a book that does exactly that. Tatum states this goal in his introduction:
My ultimate objective in writing No Man's Land was to help lower the failure rate of this country's emerging growth businesses. I want to prevent entrepreneurs who have nurtured a wonderful idea from growing their firms right out of business. I want to help those first-, second-, and third-generation family members to understand what they are up against and what they need to consider in order to pass their businesses on to the next generation. I want to help those of you in the corporate world decide whether or not to jump ship and help grow a young company that you believe is on to something big.
Tatum does believe that some businesses have to remain small to remain profitable, but for those that are suited for growth, he delineates four M's needed to make it a successful venture: Market, Management, Model, and Money. Having built Tatum, LLC, the author has successfully used these M's to meet the challenges inherent in turning a small, human-scale organization into a firm that now has more than one thousand professionals and thirty-three offices across the country. As a speaker, Tatum teaches entrepreneurs around the country about the business terrain he calls No Man's Land, and discusses how (and even whether) to grow your business through that dangerous terrain.
Should a firm get big? There is no "correct" answer. The decision to embark on the No Man's Land journey--or to complete the journey once it has already begun--reflects not merely an assessment of the firm's financial prospects or its ability to apply the four Ms, but also a determination of the entrepreneur's own personal ambitions.
Contrary to popular belief, it is not corporate America that grows jobs in this country. Instead, our society relies on the success of these high-growth companies. The key to that success, says Tatum, is to implement changes that professionalize the company but keep it focused on the customer the leaders first set out to serve. For any entrepreneur looking to grow their business, or wondering if they even should, this is essential reading.
Fall book preview: No Man's Land
Posted Sept. 4, 2007 3:00 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In Start-ups - 800 CEO Read Blog
When the seasons change (and we're almost to that point here in Wisconsin), we start buzzing a little bit louder. The phones ring, the books move about the office, and we start asking each other questions like "When does that book pub?" and "Are we doing anything special with this new title?" A bunch of books are hitting the shelves starting this week, and you can will probably find an execerpt, review, or discussion for each on our blogs.
Keep this book on your radar: No Man's Land: What to Do When Your Company is TOO BIG to Be Small but TOO SMALL to Be Big by Doug Tatum.
Portfolio, the publisher, is really excited about this book. We first heard about it when we were in NYC in May. Here's a snippet from the introduction:
The entrepreneurs I encounter are routinely stymied by their inability to "get out of the weeds," to rise above chaotic operational firefighting and see their businesses in a new strategic light. To traverse No Man's Land, however, entrepreneurs need to become radically objective about their situation and knowledgeable about the strategic choices available to them.They also need a plan.
Tatum proposes a four-part plan which he calls "the four Ms." These are "fundamental navigational principles for managing a rapidly growing company." Here they are:
- Understand the transition that will occur in the business's Market.
- Address the changes that will be required in its Management.
- Test its economic Model to assure continued profitability as the business scales upward.
- Understand the practical requirements for attracting the needed Money.
You'll hear more about the book after its pub date, but for now, you can hear about it from Doug Tatum himself in an Inc. Magazine interview here:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070901/welcome-to-no-mans-land.html
