Marketing Genius


Peter Fisk - 2006
    Marketing guru Peter Fisk's inspirational manual of marketing shows you how to inject marketing genius into your business to stand out from the crowd and deliver exceptional results. Marketing Genius is about achieving genius in your business and its markets, through your everyday decisions and actions. It combines the deep intelligence and radical creativity required to make sense of, and stand out in today's markets. It applies the genius of Einstein and Picasso to the challenges of marketing, brands and innovation, to deliver exceptional impact in the market and on the bottom line. Marketers need new ways of thinking and more radical creativity. Here you will learn from some of the world's most innovative brands and marketers - from Alessi to Zara, Jones Soda to Jet Blue, Google to Innocent. Peter Fisk is a highly experienced marketer. He spent many years working for the likes of British Airways and American Express, Coca Cola and Microsoft. He was the CEO of the world's largest professional marketing organisation, the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and lead the global marketing practice of PA Consulting Group. He writes and speaks regularly on all aspects of marketing. He has authored over 50 papers, published around the world, and is co-author of the FT Handbook of Management. -Marketers who want to recharge their left and right brains can do no better than read Marketing Genius. It's all there: concepts, tools, companies and stories of inspired marketers.- --Professor Philip Kotler, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and author of Marketing Management-A fantastic book, full of relevant learning. The mass market is dead. The consumer is boss. Imagination, intuition and inspiration reign. Geniuses wanted.- --Kevin Roberts, Worldwide CEO Saatchi & Saatchi, and author of Lovemarks-This is a clever book: it tells you all the things you need to think, know and do to make money from customers and then calls you a genius for reading it.- --Hamish Pringle, Director General of Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, and author of Celebrity Sells-This is a truly prodigious book. Peter Fisk is experienced, urbane and creative, all the attributes one would expect from a top marketer. The case histories in this book are inspirational and Peter's writing style is engaging and very much to the point. This book deserves a special place in the substantial library of books on marketing.- --Professor Malcolm McDonald, Cranfield School of Management, and author of Marketing Plans-Customers, brands and marketing should sit at the heart of every business's strategy and performance today. Marketing Genius explains why this matters more than ever, and how to achieve it for business and personal success- --Professor John Quelch, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of New Global Brands-Marketing Genius offers marketers 99% inspiration for only 1% perspiration.- --Hugh Burkitt, CEO, The Marketing Society

Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works


Ash Maurya - 2012
    We’re building more products than ever before, but most of them fail—not because we can’t complete what we set out to build, but because we waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product.What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success. That’s the promise of Running Lean.In this inspiring book, Ash Maurya takes you through an exacting strategy for achieving a "product/market fit" for your fledgling venture, based on his own experience in building a wide array of products from high-tech to no-tech. Throughout, he builds on the ideas and concepts of several innovative methodologies, including the Lean Startup, Customer Development, and bootstrapping.Running Lean is an ideal tool for business managers, CEOs, small business owners, developers and programmers, and anyone who’s interested in starting a business project.Find a problem worth solving, then define a solutionEngage your customers throughout the development cycleContinually test your product with smaller, faster iterationsBuild a feature, measure customer response, and verify/refute the ideaKnow when to "pivot" by changing your plan’s courseMaximize your efforts for speed, learning, and focusLearn the ideal time to raise your "big round" of fundingGet on track with The Lean Series Presented by Eric Ries—bestselling author of The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses—The Lean Series gives you solid footing in a proven methodology that will help your business succeed.

The San Francisco Fallacy: The Ten Fallacies That Make Founders Fail


Jonathan Siegel - 2017
    Most importantly, it's about how to avoid making these same mistakes yourself.In The San Francisco Fallacy, serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jonathan Siegel looks at the 10 biggest fallacies that run through startup culture. Over his many years launching companies, he's fallen victim to what he now recognizes as a series of common errors, misconceptions that bedevil startups to this day. But he also learned how to sidestep and surmount many of these challenges.After multiple eight-figure exits and other startup successes, Jonathan began to see the deeper fallacies in which his failures took root. His biggest career successes, on the other hand, seemed to come when he and his teams went against the tide and did everything "wrong."This book is an examination of the popular belief system about startups. At its heart is a series of challenges to years of accumulated startup orthodoxy. What emerges is not just a critique but an inspiring call--to anyone trying to build a successful business--for a broader kind of critical thinking.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It


Chris Voss - 2016
    Never Split the Difference takes you inside his world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing the nine key principles that helped Voss and his colleagues succeed when it mattered the most – when people’s lives were at stake.Rooted in the real-life experiences of an intelligence professional at the top of his game, Never Split the Difference will give you the competitive edge in any discussion.

Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere


Ravi Venkatesan - 2013
    The renewal of interest in India is all the greater because of what’s happening in neighboring China. For over thirty years, China was the growth engine for many Western multinational companies, but the combination of a slowing economy, rising wages, and increasing political risk has most companies looking for the next China. No other country is better positioned to play that role than India. In the short term, though, India will remain a challenging market, with a well-deserved reputation for corruption, uncertainty, and stultifying bureaucracy. Those hurdles are unlikely to go away soon. Yet India may be on the verge of unprecedented growth. Can you afford to wait or should you plunge into this complex market today? What does it really take to win there? How do executives deal with India’s volatility, uncertainty, and intense competition—and even prosper from it? Ravi Venkatesan, the former Chairman of Microsoft India and Cummins India, offers expert advice on how your company can overcome the unique challenges of the Indian market. He argues that India is in fact an archetype for most developing nations, many of which present similar challenges. Succeeding in India is important not just because it is a big market but also because it is a litmus test for your corporation’s ability to succeed in other emerging markets. If you can win in India, you should be able to win anywhere. Hard as these frontier markets are, Venkatesan argues, the bigger hurdle may well be the internal culture and mind-set at a multinational’s headquarters. The unwillingness to make a long-term commitment or to adequately trust local leadership, combined with the propensity to rigidly replicate the products, business models, and operating systems that have worked at home, drives many companies into a “midway trap.” That often results in India remaining an irrelevantly small contributor to the company’s global growth and profits. Combining personal experience and in-depth interviews with CEOs and senior leaders at dozens of companies—including Microsoft, GE, JCB, Dell, Honeywell, Volvo, Bosch, Deere, Unilever, and Nestlé—Venkatesan shows you how to tackle political changes, policy uncertainty, and corruption and thrive in India. He proves that you can break through, but it takes a very different type of leadership, both locally and at corporate headquarters. If you want to succeed in the twenty-first century, you must succeed in emerging markets. This practical book, written by one of India’s most respected CEOs, gives you the keys to win in India, other emerging markets, and, indeed, globally.

How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business


Douglas W. Hubbard - 1985
    Douglas Hubbard helps us create a path to know the answer to almost any question in business, in science, or in life . . . Hubbard helps us by showing us that when we seek metrics to solve problems, we are really trying to know something better than we know it now. How to Measure Anything provides just the tools most of us need to measure anything better, to gain that insight, to make progress, and to succeed." -Peter Tippett, PhD, M.D. Chief Technology Officer at CyberTrust and inventor of the first antivirus software "Doug Hubbard has provided an easy-to-read, demystifying explanation of how managers can inform themselves to make less risky, more profitable business decisions. We encourage our clients to try his powerful, practical techniques." -Peter Schay EVP and COO of The Advisory Council "As a reader you soon realize that actually everything can be measured while learning how to measure only what matters. This book cuts through conventional cliches and business rhetoric and offers practical steps to using measurements as a tool for better decision making. Hubbard bridges the gaps to make college statistics relevant and valuable for business decisions." -Ray Gilbert EVP Lucent "This book is remarkable in its range of measurement applications and its clarity of style. A must-read for every professional who has ever exclaimed, 'Sure, that concept is important, but can we measure it?'" -Dr. Jack Stenner Cofounder and CEO of MetraMetrics, Inc.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles


Peter F. Drucker - 1985
    A superbly practical book that explains what established businesses, public survey institutions, and new yentures have to know, have to learn, and have to do in today' s economy and marketplace.

Disrupting Digital Business: Create an Authentic Experience in the Peer-to-Peer Economy


R "Ray" Wang - 2015
    The digital transformation demands that we focus our attention on experiences and outcomes. Business leaders and their organizations must shift to keeping promises—no matter how their customers interact with them.But organizations no longer control the conversation. In this era of social and mobile technology, customers, employees, suppliers, and partners are in direct communication with one another. Those personal networks and the brands they’re passionate about influence their decision making and their spending.The workforce has changed too. Employees expect to be able to determine when and how they will work, the technology they’ll use, and the values their company will espouse.Organizations can take part in this conversation only if they recognize how and where it’s happening. Resisting these changes will leave executives, managers, and their companies powerless. Organizations must pivot with and ahead of these social, organizational, and technological shifts or risk being left behind.Technology guru Ray Wang shows how organizations can surf the waves of change—how they can keep their promises. Current trends, when taken seriously, require a new way of thinking about business that includes five key areas:1. Consumerization of technology and the new C-suite2. Data’s influence in driving decisions3. Digital marketing transformation4. The future of work5. Matrix commerceDigital disruption has changed how we do our work. But by mastering these trends you’ll delight your customers with every interaction.

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future


Joichi Ito - 2016
    The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history. The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, transforming every aspect of society, from business to culture and from the public sphere to our most private moments. The people who succeed will be the ones who learn to think differently. In Whiplash, Joi Ito and Jeff Howe distill that logic into nine organizing principles for navigating and surviving this tumultuous period: Emergence over AuthorityPull over PushCompasses over MapsRisk over SafetyDisobedience over CompliancePractice over TheoryDiversity over AbilityResilience over StrengthSystems over Objects Filled with incredible case studies and cutting-edge research and philosophies from the MIT Media Lab and beyond, Whiplash will help you adapt and succeed in this unpredictable world.

High Growth Handbook


Elad Gil - 2018
    Across all of these break-out companies, a set of common patterns has evolved into a repeatable playbook that Gil has codified in High Growth Handbook. Covering key topics including the role of the CEO, managing your board, recruiting and managing an executive team, M&A, IPOs and late stage funding rounds, and interspersed with over a dozen interviews with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz), and Aaron Levie (Box), High Growth Handbook presents crystal clear guidance for navigating the most complex challenges that confront leaders and operators in high-growth startups. In what Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn and co-author of the #1 NYT bestsellers The Alliance and The Startup of You calls "a trenchant guide," High Growth Handbook is the playbook for turning a startup into a unicorn. "Elad Gil is one of Silicon Valley's seriously knowledgeable and battle-tested players. If you want the chance to turn your startup into the next Google or Twitter, then read this trenchant guide from someone who played key roles in the growth of these companies." - Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, co-author of the #1 NYT bestsellers "The Alliance" and "The Startup of You," and host of the podcast Masters of Scale "Elad eschews trite management aphorisms in favor of pragmatic and straight-shooting insights on complex topics like managing a board of directors, executing functional re-organizations with as little trauma as possible, and everything in-between." - Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter and serial entrepreneur "Elad first invested in Airbnb when we were less than 10 people and provided early advice on scaling the company. This book shares these learnings for the next generation of entrepreneurs." - Nathan Blecharczyk, cofounder of Airbnb, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chairman of Airbnb China "Elad jam-packs every useful lesson about building and scaling companies into a single, digestible book. My only gripe is that he didn't write this when we were in the early days of Box as it would have saved my ass countless times." -Aaron Levie, cofounder and CEO of Box "Armed with observations gathered scaling some of the most successful and important companies of Silicon Valley, Elad has no-nonsense, highly applicable advice to any operator transitioning a company from the proverbial garage to the next stage and beyond." - Max Levchin, cofounder and CEO of Affirm, cofounder and CTO of PayPal "Elad is one of the most experienced operators in Silicon Valley having seen numerous companies hit their inflection point. His advice has been key for Coinbase as we go through hypergrowth, from hiring executives to improving M&A." - Brian Armstrong, cofounder and CEO of Coinbase"Elad is one of the best connected and respected early stage investors in the Valley - he invested in Minted when we had fewer than 50 employees and his advice was critical to us in growing our business to where we are now, in the low hundreds of millions in sales. In his book, he crystallizes all of these learnings for the next generation of companies."-Mariam Naficy, cofounder and CEO of Minted

Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition


Stephen M. Shapiro - 2011
    Air Force, and USAA. He teaches his clients that innovation isn't just about generating occasional new ideas; it's about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition.Hire people you don't like. Bring in the right mix of people to unleash your team's full potential. Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Define challenges more clearly. If you ask better questions, you will get better answers. Don't think outside the box; find a better box. Instead of giving your employees a blank slate, provide them with well-defined parameters that will increase their creative output. Failure is always an option. Looking at innovation as a series of experiments allows you to redefine failure and learn from your results.Shapiro shows that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack.

Consumption Economics: The New Rules of Tech


J.B. Wood - 2011
    The true disruption will be to your business model. Future customers won’t want to pay you high prices out of big “CapEx” budgets anymore. They will expect lower “cloud” prices paid from “OpEx” budgets only when and if they successfully consume the business value of your products.How your company reacts to this risk shift could either accelerate the commoditization of your products or lead you to a new stage of profitable growth. For the first time, the tools are on the table to truly eliminate barriers of cost and complexity created by the last generation of tech. Consumption Economics is the owner’s manual for tech company executives who want to drive their company successfully into the next one.

Kellogg on Marketing


Alice M. Tybout - 2000
    This is a must-have marketing reference.

Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms


David S. Evans - 2016
    Economists call matchmakers multisided platforms because they provide physical or virtual platforms for multiple groups to get together. Dating sites connect people with potential matches, for example, and ride-sharing apps do the same for drivers and riders. Although matchmakers have been around for millennia, they’re becoming more and more popular—and profitable—due to dramatic advances in technology, and a lot of companies that have managed to crack the code of this business model have become today’s power brokers.Don’t let the flashy successes fool you, though. Starting a matchmaker is one of the toughest business challenges, and almost everyone who tries to build one, fails.In Matchmakers, David Evans and Richard Schmalensee, two economists who were among the first to analyze multisided platforms and discover their principles, and who’ve consulted for some of the most successful platform businesses in the world, explain how matchmakers work best in practice, why they do what they do, and how entrepreneurs can improve their chances for success.Whether you’re an entrepreneur, an investor, a consumer, or an executive, your future will involve more and more multisided platforms, and Matchmakers—rich with stories from platform winners and losers—is the one book you’ll need in order to navigate this appealing but confusing world.

Rise of the Data Cloud


Frank Slootman - 2020