Everyone who wants to make the world a better place becomes possessed by a grand idea.But what does it take to turn your idea into action?  Whether you are an entrepreneur, intrapreneur, or not-for-profit crusader, there’s no shortage of advice available on issues such as writing a business plan, recruiting, raising capital, and branding. In fact, there are so many books, articles, and Web sites that many startups get bogged down to the point of paralysis. Or else they focus on the wrong priorities and go broke before they discover their mistakes. In The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki brings two decades of experience as one of business’s most original and irreverent strategists to offer the essential guide for anyone starting anything, from a multinational corporation to a church group. At Apple in the 1980s, he helped lead one of the great companies of the century, turning ordinary consumers into evangelists. As founder and CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture capital firm, he has field-tested his ideas with dozens of newly hatched companies. And as the author of bestselling business books and articles, he has advised thousands of people who are making their startup dreams real. From raising money to hiring the right people, from defining your positioning to creating a brand, from creating buzz to buzzing the competition, from managing a board to fostering a community, this book will guide you through an adventure that’s more art than science—the art of the start.

    Now, James Dyson, the inventor and entrepreneur who made it all happen, tells his remarkable and inspirational story in Invention: A Life.   Famously, over a four-year period, James Dyson made 5127 prototypes of the cyclonic vacuum cleaner that would transform the way houses are cleaned around the world. In devoting all his resources to iteratively developing the technology, he risked it all, but out ofmany failures and setbacks came hard-fought success. His products - including vacuum cleaners, hair dryers and hair stylers, and fans and purifiers - are not only revolutionary technologies, but design classics. This was a legacy of his time studying at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s, when he was inspired by some of the most famous artists, designers and inventors of the era, as well as his engineering heroes such as Frank Whittle and Alec Issigonis.   In Invention: A Life, Dyson reveals how he came to set up his own company and led it to become one of the most inventive technology companies in the world. It is a compelling and dramatic tale, with many obstacles overcome. Dyson has always looked to the future, even setting up his own university to help provide the next generation of engineers and designers. For, as he says, 'everything changes all the time, so experience is of little use'.  Whether you are someone who has an idea for a better product, an aspiring entrepreneur, whether you appreciate great design or a page-turning read, Invention: A Life offers you inspiration, hope and much more.

    Christensen says outstanding companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership -- or worse, disappear completely. And he not only proves what he says, he tells others how to avoid a similar fate.Focusing on "disruptive technology" -- the Honda Super Cub, Intel's 8088 processor, or the hydraulic excavator, for example -- Christensen shows why most companies miss "the next great wave." Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, "The Innovator's Dilemma" presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.

    This is a ride on the Google wave, and the fullest account of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses. With unprecedented access to Google's founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Ken Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined.Auletta goes inside Google's closed-door meetings, introducing Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with - and against - them. In Googled, the reader discovers the 'secret sauce' of the company's success and why the worlds of 'new' and 'old' media often communicate as if residents of different planets. It may send chills down traditionalists' spines, but it's a crucial roadmap to the future of media business: the Google story may well be the canary in the coal mine.Googled is candid, objective and authoritative. Crucially, it's not just a history or reportage: it's ahead of the curve and unlike any other Google books, which tend to have been near-histories, somewhat starstruck, now out of date or which fail to look at the full synthesis of business and technology.

    Anything that benefited production - that benefited me and benefited my wallet - I'd do it.""The sales force at Ameriquest Mortgage took this philosophy to heart. They watched the Hollywood white-collar-crime flick "Boiler Room" as a training tape, studying how to pitch overpriced deals to unsuspecting home owners. They learned how to forge signatures on mortgage paperwork and create fake documents in "cut-and-paste" operations they dubbed "The Lab" or "The Art Department."In this stunning narrative, award-winning reporter Michael W. Hudson reveals the story of the rise and fall of the subprime mortgage business by chronicling the rise and fall of two corporate empires: Ameriquest and Lehman Brothers. As the biggest subprime lender and Wall Street's biggest patron of subprime, Ameriquest and Lehman did more than any other institutions to create the feeding frenzy that emboldened mortgage pros to flood the nation with high-risk, high-profit home loans.It's a tale populated by a remarkable cast of the characters: a shadowy billionaire who created the subprime industry out of the ashes of the 1980s S&L scandal; Wall Street executives with an insatiable desire for product; struggling home owners ensnared in the most ingenious of traps; lawyers and investigators who tried to expose the fraud; politicians and bureaucrats who turned a blind eye; and, most of all, the drug-snorting, high-living salesman who tell all about the money they made, the lies they told, the deals they closed.Provocative and gripping, "The Monster" is a searing expose of the bottom-feeding fraud and top-down greed that fueled the financial collapse."

    It’s out of date! and is way way way behind in terms of what’s actually working in the world of online business.Most ecommerce business owners are still doing things in the same way they were done back in the early dot com days. And that my friend is a recipe for disaster.There is SO much more to ecommerce than building a store, filling it with products and driving some traffic.If that describes you and your business, then let this be your wake up call!There is a transformative shift happening in the ecommerce industry right now.What worked before is either no longer an option or is rapidly losing its effectiveness.It’s time for you as an ecommerce entrepreneur to evolve your brand, your business and your brain.THIS BOOK, Is the playbook for capitalizing on this evolution.Ecommerce Evolved contains a simple, repeatable and proven formula to help you build, grow and scale a wildly profitable ecommerce business in today’s competitive market.You will find Zero Theory inside this book. Tanner Larsson has distilled years of research & practical in-the-trenches ecommerce experience into a hard hitting ecommerce blueprint.The book is broken up into 4 distinct parts and each part is then broken down into a number of focused chapters. The book kicks off with the 12 Principles of Ecommerce that have been developed after working with over 10,000 different businesses. These 12 principles...of which we can almost guarantee you are violating over half of...are what differentiate the thriving ecommerce businesses from the mediocre ones. Part 1 which is called Evolved Strategy and is where we pull back the curtain, take you behind the scenes, and show you how 7, 8 and 9 figure ecommerce businesses really work. Part 2 is called Evolved Intelligence and deals with the most underutilized aspect of most ecommerce businesses...your Data. Part 3 is called Evolved Marketing. In this section you will learn how to leverage the your business's structure and data to build create systematic and highly automated marketing campaigns for both the front end and back end of your business that produce massive return on investment. Ecommerce Evolved takes you through the exact same processes I take my high level clients through as we restructure their businesses for maximum growth, profitability and most importantly longevity.As an added benefit… Ecommerce evolved is also the key that will unlock access to my private ecommerce community.This is an up till now secret group of ecommerce professionals where we talk shop, strategize and grow our businesses through the collective genius of the group.This book is literally the step-by-step blueprint to building a successful and highly profitable ecommerce business and the private community is the support group that will help you along the way.

    It has led nothing short of a revolution in the entertainment industries, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue while capturing the imaginations of hundreds of millions of people in over 190 countries. But to reach these great heights, Netflix, which launched in 1998 as an online DVD rental service, has had to reinvent itself over and over again. This type of unprecedented flexibility would have been impossible without the counterintuitive and radical management principles that cofounder Reed Hastings established from the very beginning. Hastings rejected the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate and defied tradition to instead build a culture focused on freedom and responsibility, one that has allowed Netflix to adapt and innovate as the needs of its members and the world have simultaneously transformed.Hastings set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls. At Netflix, there are no vacation or expense policies. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance, and hard work is irrel-evant. At Netflix, you don't try to please your boss, you give candid feedback instead. At Netflix, employees don't need approval, and the company pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised these unorthodox principles, the implications were unknown and untested. But in just a short period, their methods led to unparalleled speed and boldness, as Netflix quickly became one of the most loved brands in the world.Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, bestselling author of The Culture Map and one of the world's most influential business thinkers, dive deep into the controversial ideologies at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from Hastings's own career, No Rules Rules is the fascinating and untold account of the philosophy behind one of the world's most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.

    It’s an engaging, if in some ways infuriating, tale of how self-serving bank executives systematically broke the rules, lent with astonishing recklessness, abused customers and got suckered by Wall Street – before ultimately dumping their mess on taxpayers. Fraser doesn’t just point the finger at Royal’s clueless bankers. He also expertly chronicles the role of misguided regulations, captured supervisors and deluded politicians in fuelling this catastrophe.’ – Yves Smith, founder of Naked Capitalism and author of econned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism ‘This book should be posted through the letterbox of every taxpayer in Britain.’ – David Mellor, former chief secretary to the Treasury and secretary of state for National Heritage ‘Ian Fraser has spotted stories, uncovered scandals and written about them in a detailed and accessible way that leaves many other financial journalists in the dust.’ – Eamonn O’Neill, director of the MSc course in investigative journalism at the University of Strathclyde At its zenith, the Royal Bank of Scotland was the world’s biggest bank. It had assets of $3 trillion, employed over 200,000 people, had branches on every high street and was admired and trusted by millions of borrowers and investors. Now the mere mention of its name causes anger and resentment, and its former CEO, Fred Goodwin, is reviled as one of the architects of the worst financial crisis since 1929. In Shredded, Ian Fraser lifts the lid on the catastrophic mistakes that led the bank to the brink of collapse, scrutinizing the role played by RBS’s directors, who failed to check Goodwin’s hubris, the colleagues who were overawed by his despotic leadership style, the politicians who created a regulatory free-for-all in which banks went virtually unsupervised, and the investors who egged Goodwin on. As more and more toxic details emerge about the bank’s pre- and post-bailout misconduct, which stretches from the ruination of numerous small businesses in the UK and Ireland to the criminal fiddling of Yen Libor, and from the alleged manipulation of global foreign-exchange markets to the wholesale ‘mis-selling’ of US mortgage bonds, Ian Fraser examines what the future holds for RBS and whether it can ever regain the public’s trust.

    By 1993, the computer industry had changed so rapidly the company was on its way to losing $16 billion and IBM was on a watch list for extinction -- victimized by its own lumbering size, an insular corporate culture, and the PC era IBM had itself helped invent.Then Lou Gerstner was brought in to run IBM. Almost everyone watching the rapid demise of this American icon presumed Gerstner had joined IBM to preside over its continued dissolution into a confederation of autonomous business units. This strategy, well underway when he arrived, would have effectively eliminated the corporation that had invented many of the industry's most important technologies.Instead, Gerstner took hold of the company and demanded the managers work together to re-establish IBM's mission as a customer-focused provider of computing solutions. Moving ahead of his critics, Gerstner made the hold decision to keep the company together, slash prices on his core product to keep the company competitive, and almost defiantly announced, "The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision."Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? tells the story of IBM's competitive and cultural transformation. In his own words, Gerstner offers a blow-by-blow account of his arrival at the company and his campaign to rebuild the leadership team and give the workforce a renewed sense of purpose. In the process, Gerstner defined a strategy for the computing giant and remade the ossified culture bred by the company's own success.The first-hand story of an extraordinary turnaround, a unique case study in managing a crisis, and a thoughtful reflection on the computer industry and the principles of leadership, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? sums up Lou Gerstner's historic business achievement. Taking readers deep into the world of IBM's CEO, Gerstner recounts the high-level meetings and explains the pressure-filled, no-turning-back decisions that had to be made. He also offers his hard-won conclusions about the essence of what makes a great company run.In the history of modern business, many companies have gone from being industry leaders to the verge of extinction. Through the heroic efforts of a new management team, some of those companies have even succeeded in resuscitating themselves and living on in the shadow of their former stature. But only one company has been at the pinnacle of an industry, fallen to near collapse, and then, beyond anyone's expectations, returned to set the agenda. That company is IBM.Lou Gerstener, Jr., served as chairman and chief executive officer of IBM from April 1993 to March 2002, when he retired as CEO. He remained chairman of the board through the end of 2002. Before joining IBM, Mr. Gerstner served for four years as chairman and CEO of RJR Nabisco, Inc. This was preceded by an eleven-year career at the American Express Company, where he was president of the parent company and chairman and CEO of its largest subsidiary. Prior to that, Mr. Gerstner was a director of the management consulting firm of McKinsey & Co., Inc. He received a bachelor's degree in engineering from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

    In Working Backwards, these two long-serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early aughts—a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life—Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable.With keen analysis and practical steps for applying it at your own company—no matter the size—the authors illuminate how Amazon’s fourteen leadership principles inform decision-making at all levels and reveal how the company’s culture has been defined by four characteristics: customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence. Bryar and Carr explain the set of ground-level practices that ensure these are translated into action and flow through all aspects of the business.Working Backwards is a practical guidebook and a corporate narrative, filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how it has affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices—shared here for the very first time. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

    Robert Reed Church, became the largest landowner in Tennessee. Hannah Elias, the mistress of a New York City millionaire, used the land her lover gave her to build an empire in Harlem. Orphan and self-taught chemist Annie Turnbo-Malone, developed the first national brand of hair care products. Mississippi school teacher O. W. Gurley, developed a piece of Tulsa, Oklahoma, into a “town” for wealthy black professionals and craftsmen that would become known as “the Black Wall Street.” Although Madam C. J Walker was given the title of America’s first female black millionaire, she was not. She was the first, however, to flaunt and openly claim her wealth—a dangerous and revolutionary act.Nearly all the unforgettable personalities in this amazing collection were often attacked, demonized, or swindled out of their wealth. Black Fortunes illuminates as never before the birth of the black business titan.

    Based on five decades of cross-disciplinary studies, experimental discovery, and practical implementation across Koch companies and their 100,000 employees worldwide, the core objective of Market-Based Management's framework is as simple as it is effective: to generate good profit.What is good profit? Good profit results when a company creates value for customers in a way that helps them improve their lives. Good profit is the result of innovations that customers freely vote for with their own dollars; it's the result of business decisions that create long term value for everyone--customers, employees, shareholders, and society.While you won't find the Koch Industries name on your home's stain-resistant carpet, your baby's more comfortable but absorbent diapers your stretch denim jeans, or your television with a better clarity screen, MBM(TM) drove these innovations and many more.Here, drawing on revealing, honest stories from his five decades in business - the company's many successes as well as its stumbles - Koch walks the reader step-by-step through the five dimensions of Market-Based Management to show stockholders, entrepreneurs, leaders, students -- and innovators, supervisors and employees of all kinds, in any field --how to apply the principles to generate Good Profit in their organizations, companies, and lives.From the Hardcover edition.

    At the time of his death in 1993, his personal fortune was estimated in excess of $400 million and his vast commercial empire spanned four continents. Despite the notoriety surrounding Lewis's financial coups, little has been written about the life of this remarkable man. Based on Lewis's unfinished autobiography, as well as scores of interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, the book cuts through the myth and media hype to reveal the man behind the legend. What emerges is a vivid portrait of a proud, fiercely determined individual with a razor-sharp tongue — and an intellect to match — who would settle for nothing less than excellence from himself and others.

    The dust had yet to settle on the global financial crisis in 2009 when an unlikely Wharton grad was setting in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Billion Dollar Whale will become a classic, harrowing parable about the financial world in the twenty-first century.

    But by the year 1900, a new type of lawyer was born, one who understood business as well as the law. Working hand in glove with their clients, over the next two decades these New York City "white shoe" lawyers devised and implemented legal strategies that would drive the business world throughout the twentieth century. These lawyers were architects of the monopolistic new corporations so despised by many, and acted as guardians who helped the kings of industry fend off government overreaching. Yet they also quietly steered their robber baron clients away from a "public be damned" attitude toward more enlightened corporate behavior during a period of progressive, turbulent change in America.Author John Oller, himself a former Wall Street lawyer, gives us a richly-written glimpse of turn-of-the-century New York, from the grandeur of private mansions and elegant hotels and the city's early skyscrapers and transportation systems, to the depths of its deplorable tenement housing conditions. Some of the biggest names of the era are featured, including business titans J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, lawyer-statesmen Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes, and presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.Among the colorful, high-powered lawyers vividly portrayed, White Shoe focuses on three: Paul Cravath, who guided his client George Westinghouse in his war against Thomas Edison and launched a new model of law firm management--the "Cravath system"; Frank Stetson, the "attorney general" for financier J. P. Morgan who fiercely defended against government lawsuits to break up Morgan's business empires; and William Nelson Cromwell, the lawyer "who taught the robber barons how to rob," and was best known for his instrumental role in creating the Panama Canal.In White Shoe, the story of this small but influential band of Wall Street lawyers who created Big Business is fully told for the first time.