Alumni Books

Dual Momentum Investing: An Innovative Strategy for Higher Returns with Lower Risk
by Gary Antonacci (MBA 1978)
(McGraw-Hill)

Antonacci explains his investing method, which combines U.S. stock, non-U.S. stock, and aggregate bond indices, in a formula that increases profits while lowering risk.

Sean Rosen Is Not for Sale
by Jeff Baron (MBA 1978)
(Greenwillow Books)

Killing Limbaugh
by Landon Carter (MBA 1967)
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)

The Awakened Relationship: Transforming Upsets and Blame into Love and Harmony
by Landon Carter (MBA 1967)
(Marshall & McClintic Publishing)

With Murder You Get Sushi: A Miss Information Technology Mystery
by Diane Davidson (MBA 1980) and Mary Ann Davidson, collaborating as Maddi Davidson
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)

Destiny’s Child: Memoirs of a Preacher’s Daughter
by Jewelle Taylor Gibbs (HRPBA 1959)
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)

Taylor Gibbs chronicles more than 200 years of her paternal family’s history and highlights their contributions to the civil rights movement in the United States.

The Human Element: The Foundation of Business at Its Best
by Richard Hannan (AMP 71, 1975)
(Clerisy Press)

The author’s message: the single unifying and fortifying element across all categories of business is people. By understanding their points of view, needs, and ideals, managers can learn to succeed along with them in a mutually respectful and beneficial way.

Hedge Fund Grannies
by Jerry Herlihy (MBA 1981)
(Gerard A. Herlihy)

A satire about another out-of-control commodity and stock market boom.

Blowing Smoke: Essays on Energy and Climate
by Rud Istvan (MBA 1974)
(Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.)

From the foreword: “Istvan . . . tackles a diverse array of topics related to climate and energy that are highly relevant to the current public debate.”

The Brand IDEA: Managing Nonprofit Brands with Integrity, Democracy, and Affinity
by Nathalie Laidler-Kylander and Julia Shepard Stenzel (both MBA 1992)
(Jossey-Bass)

The authors offer a new conceptual framework for nonprofit brand management that avoids traditional brand tenets of control and competition, largely adopted from the private sector, in favor of a strategic approach centered on the mission and based on participation, shared values, and the development of key partnerships.

From X-Rays to DNA: How Engineering Drives Biology
by W. David Lee (AMP 108, 1991), with Jeffrey Drazen, Phillip A. Sharp, and Robert S. Langer
(MIT Press)

Investigating a series of major biological discoveries that range from pasteurization to electron microscopy, Lee finds that it took an average of 40 years for the necessary technology to become available for laboratory use. He calls for new approaches to research and funding to encourage a tighter, more collaborative coupling of engineering and biology. Only then, he argues, will we see the rapid advances in the life sciences that are critically needed for life-saving diagnosis and treatment.

We’re Crazy!: A Memoir About U.S. Values
by Bert McLachlan (MBA 1959)
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)

McLachlan has written a personal guidebook for future generations that explains the confusion of values in the United States and the resultant “mess,” he calls it, that his generation is leaving them and what they will need to do about it.

Japan and the Shackles of the Past (What Everyone Needs to Know)
by R. Taggart Murphy (MBA 1981)
(Oxford University Press)

Japan is seen today as a has-been with a sluggish economy, an aging population, dysfunctional politics, and a business landscape dominated by yesterday’s champions. Murphy places these troubles in a broad historical context, combining analyses of Japanese culture and society over the centuries with accounts of Japan's numerous political regimes. America’s half-completed effort to remake Japan in the late 1940s is unraveling, and Murphy thinks the American foreign policy and defense establishment is directly culpable for what has happened.

MetaWars: The Freedom Frontier
by Jeff Norton (MBA 2003)
(Orchard Books)

The final book of the four-part science-fiction series.

The Vegetarian Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity with Vegetables, Fruits, Grains, Legumes, Nuts, Seeds, and More, Based on the Wisdom of Leading American Chefs
by Karen Page (MBA 1989)
(Little Brown and Co.)

People have chosen to adopt vegetarian or vegan diets for a variety of reasons, from ethics and economy to personal and planetary well-being. Experts now suggest a new reason for doing so: maximizing flavor, which is too often masked by meat-based stocks or butter and cream. This book provides an A-to-Z listing of hundreds of ingredients, from açaí to zucchini blossoms, cross-referenced with the herbs, spices, and other seasonings that best enhance their flavor.

For God’s Sake: An Adman on the Business of Religion
by Ambi Parameswaran (AMP 186, 2014)
(Portfolio)

Combining his thirty-year experience as an adman with a passion for religious studies, the author seeks to answer such questions as: Why are Indians getting more religious but also more consumption-driven? How did a Chennai-based department store start the New Year’s sale phenomenon? Are Muslims more open-minded shoppers? Why do people who have no interest in using an MBA degree still get an MBA? What can HBS learn from the Kumbh Mela? The author shows how clever marketers have ridden the religion wave by tailoring their products and services accordingly.

The Agility Advantage: How to Identify and Act on Opportunities in a Fast-Changing World
by Amanda Setili (MBA 1990)
(Jossey-Bass)

Setili first shows how to identify those business aspects where agility is most crucial—where the business environment is changing fast—and which elements have the greatest impact on customers’ decisions. She then shows how to master three aspects of agility: market agility (gaining ideas from the most demanding and forward-thinking customers and from outside the industry), decision agility (anticipating changes and turning even troubling trends into opportunities), and execution agility (building new capabilities, shedding what doesn’t fit, and taking the first steps in a new direction).

Customers Included: How to Transform Products, Companies, and the World—with a Single Step
by Mark Hurst and Phil Terry (MBA 1998)
(Creative Good Inc.)

This book provides a road map for executives and entrepreneurs who want to create better products and services. Using real-world case studies (from Apple and Walmart to an African hand pump and the B-17 bomber), the authors explain why including the customer is an essential ingredient of success for any team, company, or organization.

Learn, Earn, Return: The Journey of a Global Entrepreneur
by Bert Twaalfhoven (MBA 1954) and Shirley Spence
(EFER)

Organized by lessons and themes, this book aims to show the different aspects of being an entrepreneur, based on the story of an accomplished global serial entrepreneur. Twaalfhoven’s lessons: 1 Pursuing Opportunities, getting in and getting out; 2 Taking Risks, failing forward; 3 Marshaling Resources, the power of networking; 4 Managing Growth, professional intrapreneurship; 5 Giving Back, easy, satisfying, and a responsibility.

Boards That Excel: Candid Insights and Practical Advice for Directors
by Joe White (MBA 1971)
(Barrett-Koehler Publishers)

White offers a road map for governance success based on his experience as a director of one of America’s largest private companies and chair of the governance committee of an S&P 500 company. He distills governance research into a handful of insights and includes candid interviews with exceptional board chairs, CEOs, and directors, who spell out what it takes for boards and directors to excel.

Fatal Impressions: Coleman and Dinah Greene Mystery No. 2
by Reba White Williams (MBA 1970)
(The Story Plant)

Job U: How to Find Wealth and Success by Developing the Skills Companies Actually Need
by Nicholas Wyman (PLDA 6, 2010)
(Crown Business)

Why do 3½ million American jobs remain unfilled? Because companies cannot find people with the skills they need. This skills gap presents opportunities for people seeking successful careers, to be found in the many educational options that provide technical, vocational, and soft skills: professional certifications, associates degrees, apprenticeships, and occupational learning.

Faculty Books

Own Your Future: How to Think Like an Entrepreneur and Thrive in an Unpredictable Economy
by Paul B. Brown, Charles F. Kiefer, and Leonard A. Schlesinger
(AMACOM)

In a world of constant layoffs and dying industries, it has become increasingly difficult to “plan” one’s way to success. So what is the solution? Emulate successful entrepreneurs. In this book, based on extensive research and interviews, Baker Foundation Professor Schlesinger and his coauthors show how to apply the simple model successful entrepreneurs use—Act. Learn. Build. Repeat—to reinvent the way one maneuvers in an unpredictable job market.

International Strategy: Context, Concepts, and Implications
by David Collis
(Wiley)

Drawing on the course material developed at the Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management by David Collis, this book provides theoretical insight and pragmatic tools that address the decisions facing senior managers in multinational corporations. Collis explores the critical differences between domestic and international competition: the heterogeneity of markets in which companies are involved; the volatility of economic conditions that firms face; and the increased scale of activities fostered by global participation. The text examines how these phenomena create tensions and tradeoffs for executives concerning which product to offer around the world, which countries to compete in, where to locate various activities, and how to organize the firm worldwide. Making those choices in an integrated fashion, it is explained, requires pursuit of a coherent strategy that builds an international advantage. Filled with illustrative examples from a wide range of international companies, the book offers an accessible guide to help managers navigate the myriad decisions they must make in order to create value from their foreign operations and outperform competitors in an increasingly integrated world.

Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters
by Walter A. Friedman
(Princeton University Press)

The period before the Great Depression saw the rise of economic forecasters, pioneers who used the tools of science to predict the future, with the aim of profiting from their forecasts. Friedman, director of HBS’s Business History Initiative, chronicles the lives and careers of the men who defined this first wave of economic fortune tellers: Roger Babson, Irving Fisher, John Moody, C. J. Bullock, and Warren Persons. They thrived in the boom years after World War I, and yet, almost to a man, they failed to predict the devastating crash of 1929.

Critical Knowledge Transfer: Tools for Managing Your Company’s Deep Smarts
by Dorothy Leonard, Walter Swap, and Gavin Barton
(Harvard Business Review Press)

When highly skilled subject-matter experts, engineers, and managers leave their organizations, they take with them their “deep smarts,” years of hard-earned, experience-based knowledge, much of it undocumented and irreplaceable. Leonard, the William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration Emerita, and her coauthors provide a variety of options for identifying a firm’s deep smarts and transferring it from experts to successors. They show how to determine the seriousness of the knowledge loss, identify the deep smarts essential to their business, use techniques for transferring knowledge when its loss is imminent, identify and implement long-term transfer program apprenticeships, set up individual learning plans for successors, and assess the success of their knowledge transfer initiatives.

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