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Posted April 8, 2009 10:03 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog
Inc. Magazine is celebrating 30 years of publication this month and as a part of their coverage have put together "The Business Owner's Bookshelf" - 30 books people running small businesses should read.
Here is the list in its entirety:
- Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, by Peter Bernstein (1996)
- The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything, by Guy Kawasaki (2004)
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson (2006)
Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust from Wedgwood to Dell, by Nancy F. Koehn (2001)
The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads, and Other Workplace Afflictions, by Scott Adams (1996)
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, by Michael Gerber (1995)
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, by Peter Drucker (1967)
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, by Peter Senge (1990)
First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman (1999)
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't, by Jim Collins (2001)
The Great Game of Business: The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company, by Jack Stack (1992)
Growing a Business, by Paul Hawken (1987)
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage, by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston (2006)
How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie (1936)
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, by Clayton Christensen (1997)
Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations, by Thomas A. Stewart (1997)
The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up, by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham (2008)
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, by Yvon Chouinard (2005)
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Don't, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2007)
The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, by Michael Lewis (1999)
Nuts! Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, by Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg (1996)
Ogilvy on Advertising, by David Ogilvy (1983)
On Competition, by Michael Porter (2008)
Personal History, by Katharine Graham (1997)
Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, by Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang (1997)
Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, by Bo Burlingham (2005)
Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder (1981)
The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (1776)
What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business, by Joan Magretta and Nan Stone (2002)
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, by James Surowiecki (2004)
Jack and I think it is a pretty good list. Eleven of their 30 books match with selections from The 100 Best. The editors provide some big challenges for readers recommending The Wealth of Nations, On Competition, and The Fifth Discipline. Nuts! and Let My People Go Surfing are great for business owners (also check out Raising The Bar). And their fun add of The Dilbert Principle is a great one, showing us what to do by showing us what not to do.
2009 Axiom Business Book Awards Announced
Posted Feb. 23, 2009 5:03 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Book Awards - 800 CEO Read Blog
The Jenkins Group announced their 2009 Axiom Business Book Award winners.
Seventy seven books in all were recognized this year. Books like Tribes, The Knack, The Go-Giver, The Back of The Napkin and Predictably Irrational were selected in various categories.
On the local side, Milwaukee historian John Gurda was awarded a Bronze Medal for his The Policyowner's Company: A History of Northwestern Mutual, 1857-2007.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Jack Covert Selects - The Knack
Posted Dec. 11, 2008 3:12 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham, Portfolio, 274 pages, $25.95, Hardcover, October 2008, ISBN 9781591842217
Most entrepreneurship books just don't deliver. The wide variability in fledging businesses makes it nearly impossible to write a universal prescription for success. Books about the entrepreneur who made it big are often filled with more celebrity and celebration than hard-won lessons and real life pain. I am happy to suggest a wonderful exception to this unfortunate rule.
The Knack opens with the story of Bobby and Helene Stone. Bobby has just lost his job and decides to join his wife's computer supply business that she runs out of the couple's home. Helene is not sure it is such a good idea, but Bobby is enthusiastic. And through the Stone's story, authors Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham tell the quintessential tale of every entrepreneur--the seed of a new enterprise, the quest for independence, and the fear of failure (and bankruptcy).
Brodsky, an eight-time start-up founder, counsels the couple and walks them through the creation of a simple business plan with them. He shows the dream is possible, but it will take hard work and a significant portion of their savings. The first several months are difficult as Bobby takes low margin orders to make the sales number. The authors' show just how corrosive those actions are to a fledging business as the couple is forced to dip further into their savings to keep the company afloat. The Stones reach a point of self-sustainability about a year later. The couple appears again in the final chapter detailing the challenges of hiring their son to expand the sales force, venturing onto the Internet and landing a large distribution deal.
Becoming the boss, dealing with investors, hiring the best (and firing those who don't work out) is just a sampling of the additional stories you'll find in The Knack. It is rich and relatable stories like these that have made Brodsky and Burlingham's "Street Smarts" column in Inc. Magazine so compelling over the last 14 years. Brodsky has an endless supply of stories from the start-ups he has launched and the countless entrepreneurs he has helped over the years. And Burlingham's role in this production should not be overlooked as he lends his editorial might to the effective telling of these real-life lessons. The pair delivers an outstanding book in The Knack, one that I am happy to recommend to any current or aspiring entrepreneur.
The 2008 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards - Entrepreneurship and Small Business Category
Posted Dec. 5, 2008 6:10 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
In Book Awards - 800 CEO Read Blog
The books on our 2008 shortlist for the Entrepreneurship and Small Business Category are:
- Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur
by Richard Branson (Virgin Books, Sept 2008)The selection here is simple: Branson is and continues to be the world's most recognized entrepreneur. Virgin Mobile USA reached one billion dollars in
revenues faster than any company in history (Google and Amazon included). With over 300 companies under the Virgin umbrella, there are more than enough
stories and lessons to share.
- The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up
by Bo Burlingham and Norm Brodsky (Portfolio, October 2008)
Brodsky and Burlingham have been writing their "Street Smarts" column
for Inc. Magazine since 1995, and now they have compiled that useful wisdom in this collections of stories about companies that have "the knack" for facing challenges and pursuing opportunities. The first chapter's description of gross margin and its make-or-break effect on a fledging business alone earns it the top spot this year.
- Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
by Guy Kawasaki (Portfolio, November 2008)Five parts practical and one part humor, Guy delivers 94 chapters of the art and reality of business. The material ranges from six lessons from micro-loan lender Kiva, to archetypes you want on a company board, to psychology professor Carol Dweck's Effort Effect. This powerful potpourri of top ten lists and distillations contains a solution for any problem you might face.
- What's Stopping You?: Shatter the 9 Most Common Myths Keeping You from Starting Your Own Business
by Bruce R. Barringer and R Duane Ireland (FT Press, May 2008)These professors take a more academic look at entrepreneurship and seek to dispel some falsehoods that have persisted in starting a new business, including "starting a business involves lots of risk," "it takes a lot of money to start a business" and "the best business ideas are already taken."
