But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on "validated learning," rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it's too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

    Mullen, Jr. reveals how to become a top-producing financial advisor using the method he has taught at Merrill Lynch and is famous for in the industry. This comprehensive book combines marketing, prospecting, sales, and time management techniques into a system that will help readers build a successful and lucrative practice. Mullen gives financial advisors all the tools and guidance they need to:- get the appointment - build relationships - convert prospects to client - retain clients - use niche marketing successfully - balance current clients and prospects - increase the products and services each client uses - attract millionaire clientsContaining templates, scripts, letters, and 15 tried-and-true Market Action Plans, this indispensable guide shows readers how to take their financial services practice to the million-dollar level and beyond.

    They are diverse in age, in outlook and the industries they made a mark in. But they have one thing in common: they believed in the power of their dreams. This book seeks to inspire young graduates to look beyond placements and salaries. To believe in their dreams.

    His blog has garnered a devoted following of millions of readers who have come to rely on him to help them run their businesses. A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.His advice is grounded in anecdotes from his own hard-earned rise—from cofounding the early cloud service provider Loudcloud to building the phenomenally successful Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, both with fellow tech superstar Marc Andreessen (inventor of Mosaic, the Internet's first popular Web browser). This is no polished victory lap; he analyzes issues with no easy answers through his trials, includingdemoting (or firing) a loyal friend;whether you should incorporate titles and promotions, and how to handle them;if it's OK to hire people from your friend's company;how to manage your own psychology, while the whole company is relying on you;what to do when smart people are bad employees;why Andreessen Horowitz prefers founder CEOs, and how to become one;whether you should sell your company, and how to do it.Filled with Horowitz's trademark humor and straight talk, and drawing from his personal and often humbling experiences, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures.

    You’ll learn how to:• Stay in control under pressure• Defuse anger and hostility• Find out what the other side really wants• Counter dirty tricks• Use power to bring the other side back to the table• Reach agreements that satisfies both sides' needsGetting Past No is the state-of-the-art book on negotiation for the twenty-first century. It will help you deal with tough times, tough people, and tough negotiations. You don’t have to get mad or get even. Instead, you can get what you want!

    Under Andrew Grove's leadership, Intel has become the world's largest computer chipmaker, the 5th most admired company in America, and the 7th most profitable company among the Fortune 500. Few CEOs can claim this level of success. Grove attributes much of it to the philosophy and strategy he has learned the hard way as he steered Intel through a series of potential major disasters. There are moments in any business when massive change occurs, when all the rules of business shift fast, furiously and forever. Grove calls such moments strategic inflection points (SIPs), and he has lived through several. They can be set off by almost anything - by mega competition, an arcane change in regulations, or by a seemingly modest change in technology. They are not always easy to spot - but you can't hide from them. Intel's first SIP was when the Japanese started producing better-quality, lower-cost memory chips. It took Grove three years and huge losses to recognize that he had to rethink and reposition the company to become, once again, leader in its field.Grove extrapolates the lessons he has learned from this and other SIPs - for instance the drama of the Pentium flaw, and the SIP brought on by the Internet - to reveal a unique insight into the management of change. He recounts strategies from other companies and examines his own record of success and failure. Only the Paranoid Survive is a classic lesson in leadership skills that every manager in every industry will benefit from. Every manager must assume that something will change - very soon.

    So we’ve created a guide that will show you (or a friend or relative who’s just getting started): * How much you need to start investing. * The key steps for building long-term wealth. * Proven ways to find great companies to buy. Understanding these life-changing concepts will get any investor on the path to financial freedom. Built upon our 13 Steps to Investing Foolishly, The Motley Fool Guide to Investing for Beginners includes our top investors’ biggest mistakes, insights into different styles of investing, and much more. Plus, you get 3 great stock picks that we think could make a strong foundation to any portfolio.

    Victor Cheng, a former McKinsey management consultant, reveals his proven, insider's method for acing the case interview. Having personally secured job offers from McKinsey, Bain & Company, Monitor, L.E.K, Oliver Wyman, and A.T. Kearney, he has also been a McKinsey case interviewer providing you with a hands-on, real-world perspective on what it really takes to land job offers. Cheng 's prot g es work in all the major strategy management consulting firms, including McKinsey, The Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, Monitor Company, A.T. Kearny, Oliver Wyman, L.E.K, Roland Berger, Accenture, and Deloitte, as well as in the strategic planning departments of numerous Fortune 500 companies. Whether you re an undergraduate, MBA, PhD, or experienced-hire applicant candidate, you ll discover: * What case interviewers really say about you behind closed doors but wouldn t dare tell you until now * The subtle yet specific performance differences that separate those who get management consulting offers from those who don t * The 10 biggest mistakes candidates make in case interviews (and how to avoid them) * The 3 specific things interviewers expect in the first 5 minutes of a case that often decide the outcome on the spot * An insider 's take on what interviewers really look for and why and how to give them what they want Praise for Victor Cheng and Case Interview Secrets With Victor 's help, I went from not knowing anything about consulting to securing offers from McKinsey and BCG. Mihnea Munteanu, University of Michigan I received six offers from McKinsey, BCG, Booz, Deloitte, A.T. Kearney, and Marakon. Everything Victor said was right Michael Yang, Northwestern University Despite having a liberal arts degree from a state school, I landed a dream job with L.E.K. Consulting. Thanks, Victor. Jackson Boyar, Indiana University Victor has put me in a very difficult position now I have to decide between offers from two of the top three consultancies Christopher Perez, The Wharton School In my first attempt to break into consulting, I failed every one of my interviews with McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Oliver Wyman, Monitor, Booz and probably a few others. On my second attempt two years later, I followed everything Victor Cheng suggested and took advantage of every resource he provided and received an offer from McKinsey Daniel Suo, Business Analyst (Offer Recipient), McKinsey, Stamford Without Victor 's help, I never would have gotten an offer from BCG. What he teaches really makes the difference between getting an offer and not. Puttipath Tasnavites, Boston Consulting Group, Thailand After following Victor 's guidance, I had a complete breakthrough in my case interview performance and got an offer from Monitor. Marine Serres, Monitor & Company As a PhD candidate in engineering, I had an academic background that left me completely unprepared for the case interview process. That 's when I found Victor Cheng and ended up getting my dream job. Thank you, Victor Zach Jacobson, McKinsey, New York About the Author As a former McKinsey consultant, r sum screener, and case interviewer, Victor Cheng mentors thousands of aspiring consultants via his articles and video tutorials at www.caseinterview.com. As a candidate, he passed 60 cases and received job offers from McKinsey, Bain, Monitor, LEK, AT Kearney, and Oliver Wyman. At McKinsey, he was rated in the top 10 percent of consultants worldwide in his cohort. Today he advises Inc. 500 CEOs.

    Itprovides readers with concepts, theories, models and frameworks to helpunderstand behaviour in organizations. Readers are encouraged to challengecurrent thinking in relation to their own ideas and experiences, exploring otherperspectives. The text also shows how organizational behaviour ideas and methodsapply in practical settings.Content new to this edition includes: * the organizational context* postmodernism and the post-modern organization* teleworking, call centres and employee surveillance* the learning organization* behavioural self-modification* emotional intelligence* communication theory and organizational communication* neuro-linguistic programming* job sculpting* teamworking trends* contemporary applications of scientific management* corporate strategy and organizational design* interorganizational relationships* network and virtual organizations* human resource management* the new leadership, superleaders and dispersed leadership Pedagogical f

    Geithner helped the United States navigate the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, from boom to bust to rescue to recovery. In a candid, riveting, and historically illuminating memoir, he takes readers behind the scenes of the crisis, explaining the hard choices and politically unpalatable decisions he made to repair a broken financial system and prevent the collapse of the Main Street economy. This is the inside story of how a small group of policy makers—in a thick fog of uncertainty, with unimaginably high stakes—helped avoid a second depression but lost the American people doing it. Stress Test is also a valuable guide to how governments can better manage financial crises, because this one won’t be the last.Stress Test reveals a side of Secretary Geithner the public has never seen, starting with his childhood as an American abroad. He recounts his early days as a young Treasury official helping to fight the international financial crises of the 1990s, then describes what he saw, what he did, and what he missed at the New York Fed before the Wall Street boom went bust. He takes readers inside the room as the crisis began, intensified, and burned out of control, discussing the most controversial episodes of his tenures at the New York Fed and the Treasury, including the rescue of Bear Stearns; the harrowing weekend when Lehman Brothers failed; the searing crucible of the AIG rescue as well as the furor over the firm’s lavish bonuses; the battles inside the Obama administration over his widely criticized but ultimately successful plan to end the crisis; and the bracing fight for the most sweeping financial reforms in more than seventy years. Secretary Geithner also describes the aftershocks of the crisis, including the administration’s efforts to address high unemployment, a series of brutal political battles over deficits and debt, and the drama over Europe’s repeated flirtations with the economic abyss. Secretary Geithner is not a politician, but he has things to say about politics—the silliness, the nastiness, the toll it took on his family. But in the end, Stress Test is a hopeful story about public service. In this revealing memoir, Tim Geithner explains how America withstood the ultimate stress test of its political and financial systems.

    The anthology offers more poetry by women (40 new poets), with special attention to early women poets. The book also includes a greater diversity of American poetry, with double the number of poems by African American, Hispanic, native American and Asian American poets. There are 26 new poets representing the Commonwealth literature tradition: now included are more than 37 poets from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Caribbean, South Africa and India.

    Written by highly respected experts and prestigious scholars, Hitt/Ireland/Hoskisson's STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: COMPETITIVENESS AND GLOBALIZATION, CONCEPTS AND CASES, 10E provides an intellectually rich, yet thoroughly practical analysis of strategic management today. This unique text is the only one to integrate the classic industrial organization model with a resource-based view of the firm to give readers a complete understanding of how today's businesses use strategic management to establish a sustained competitive advantage. The authors present cutting-edge research and strategic management trends within a strong global focus, using memorable examples from more than 600 companies. A wealth of learning features and selection of 30 all-new compelling cases prepare your students to face the broad range of critical issues confronting contemporary managers. Engaging video cases, CengageNOW online teaching tools, and a complete electronic business library keeps study current and relevant.

    A strategy simple enough for anyone to understand and one that runs on "autopilot" once it's set up.

    Stewart demonstrates how knowledge--not natural resources, machinery, or financial capital--has become the most important factor in economic life.  Through practical advice, stories, and case histories, Stewart reveals how organizations and individuals can create and use the knowledge assets they need.  Dazzling in its ability to make conceptual sense of the economic revolution we are living through, this ingenious book cuts through the vague rhetoric of "paradigm shifts" to show how the Information Age economy really works.Intellectual Capital should be read as if the futures of your company and your career depend on it.  They do.

    Others might point to the qualities of today’s so-called celebrity CEOs—charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style. But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term.In this refreshing, counterintuitive book, author Will Thorndike brings to bear the analytical wisdom of a successful career in investing, closely evaluating the performance of companies and their leaders. You will meet eight individualistic CEOs whose firms’ average returns outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of twenty—in other words, an investment of $10,000 with each of these CEOs, on average, would have been worth over $1.5 million twenty-five years later. You may not know all their names, but you will recognize their companies: General Cinema, Ralston Purina, The Washington Post Company, Berkshire Hathaway, General Dynamics, Capital Cities Broadcasting, TCI, and Teledyne. In The Outsiders, you’ll learn the traits and methods—striking for their consistency and relentless rationality—that helped these unique leaders achieve such exceptional performance.Humble, unassuming, and often frugal, these "outsiders” shunned Wall Street and the press, and shied away from the hottest new management trends. Instead, they shared specific traits that put them and the companies they led on winning trajectories: a laser-sharp focus on per share value as opposed to earnings or sales growth; an exceptional talent for allocating capital and human resources; and the belief that cash flow, not reported earnings, determines a company’s long-term value.Drawing on years of research and experience, Thorndike tells eye-opening stories, extracting lessons and revealing a compelling alternative model for anyone interested in leading a company or investing in one—and reaping extraordinary returns.